Your Job Can Make a Real Difference

There was a time in my life when I took a job to make a difference in the world and little did I know that one of the biggest differences would be the change in me. I'm posting the story because it's good. You don't have to change careers or make huge sacrifices to make a difference. You can make a difference everyday no matter where you are. Part of the work-life balance is work. Your job should count and matter to you. Check out my personal website if you want to learn more about following your bliss. www.josephonesta.com

In 1995, I had a successful career teaching university English in Los Angeles but my personal life was in turmoil. It seemed everyone I knew was in some stage of terminal HIV disease. Hospital visits and memorial services were just a part of life. At 35 years old, I was experiencing the same level of peer loss my parents were experience in their 70’s.

Though I held a lot of hands, ran errands, sat in waiting rooms, it didn’t feel like I could do anything for the people around me. I suffered from something called survivor’s guilt. Why among all my friends was I the one to escape the plague? It seems warped to think that way. I should have been glad that I was free of that virus but being uninfected made me almost a freak. I sometimes felt like I had to apologize for being HIV negative.

I really wanted to do more for them so I made a bold move, some say a crazy move. I quit teaching and took a job working for AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) cutting my income by about 75%. I created the nation’s premier day program for people living with AIDS. If I couldn’t stop them from dieing, I could help improve their lives in some way.

It was like day camp for people with AIDS. I was a cross between Julie on the Love Boat and Mother Theresa. I recruited, trained and managed volunteers to lead activities and administer services. I solicited donations of goods, services, products and equipment. What I couldn’t get from a volunteer or a donor, I often supplied myself.

It worked! More than 2000 clients participated but instead of being exuberant, I was exhausted. Nothing was ever good enough. They complained, tried to tell me how to do it better, whined when there wasn’t enough and criticized everything. They used characteristic rapier wit to cut me to shreds. I knew it was the frustration they felt in life that made them complain but it still hurt. It still tore me down. Inside of six months, I was beginning to fizzle out.

One day as I scrambled though the crowds setting up activities, handing out vouchers, scheduling appointments, a client stepped into my path and would not move aside until I heard her out. Chantal was six foot four and in transition from being a big, rather unattractive man to being a larger than life, very unattractive woman.

“I need to speak with you,” She held one hand on her hip, the decorated fingernails on the other cutting the air between us. I stopped waiting for yet another complaint. When she knew she had my attention, she spoke. “These bitches are going to chew you up and spit you out. You need to stand up, Joseph.”

Sure, I felt pretty chewed up already but stand up? How could I stand up to the people I was trying to serve? What I needed to do was try harder, work harder, go more. I thanked her for her comment and tried to ease my way around her.

“Oh, no, uh-uh.” she said. “Look at me. Do you think I can live my life without giving myself a pep talk once in a while? When one of these bitches has anything to say to you that doesn’t begin with please or end with thank you, in the back of your mind you need to say to yourself, “I am fabulous!”

When you wake up in the morning, the first words that come to mind should be, “I am fabulous.” Every time you look at your face in the mirror, “I am fabulous.” When you step outside your door to greet the day, “I am fabulous.” Joseph, let me be the first to tell you, I think you are fabulous.”

OK, I admit it. I thought she was nuts. I’d been living in Southern California for five years but I was still a Western Pennsylvanian. This affirmation stuff was kind of a joke to me. Surprisingly, it stuck. Whenever I was having a bad day, I could see Chantal telling me I was fabulous. “I am fabulous” became a kind of mantra that made my work a lot lighter.

“How are you doing today, Joseph?”
“Fabulous, just fabulous.”

After two years of poverty in the name of AIDS, I needed to take another job to dig myself out of the debt I had created for that program. I took a job directing a team of personal finance speakers for Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Los Angeles and one day, I was winding up a speech on credit reports to a room of perhaps 60 people when a person stood up in the back of the room and asked if I had remembered him.

“I am at client at AIDS Project Los Angeles,” he said boldly. “I just want to say that I believe I am alive today because of the man standing in front of this room. His program gave me a reason to live. I had a place to go. I had something to look forward to and I just want to say in front of everyone that I think this guy is…”

Go head. You can finish his sentence…fabulous. Considering when I first started recruiting volunteers for my program, most people with AIDS didn’t live more than two years, perhaps he was right. He had made it well past the two year mark and so did many others. Some are still around today which is more than a miracle.

I don’t take responsibility for miracles. Newer medications and treatments take the spotlight there. I do look back and see a fundamental truth. When you follow your bliss, as Joseph Campbell said, you put your self on track to live the life that you should be living. You line up with the energy of the universe and who knows, the universe might just send a six foot four transgendered person to encourage you along the way just when you need her most.