2005-04-18 - 8:25 a.m.
So this weekend, I had a dress rehearsal on Friday and a show all day Saturday - I got home Saturday night and I was exhausted! No sleeping in though - Sunday I was up at eight so I could drive to Austin to pick up a few friends who rode the MS 150. This is a bike ride which begins in Houston and ends in Austin and is over 150 miles long. My friends Sarah and Steve rode it and I volunteered to pick them up so they didn't have to take the bus back. All the way there and back, I had a smile on my face thinking about how cool my friend Sarah is.
Sarah started working here full-time when I went off to France to study ballet three years ago. Before that, she had co-oped at JSC since like the mid-eighties or something, but she took the job a little unsure about whether or not it was the right decision. Since arriving, her job has had its ups and downs, but I think it has a few more downs than she would like. There have been times when she has been rather depressed over it - haven't we all? But what impresses me about her is how she responds to it - she makes herself happy. She runs road races, she rides bike races, she freelances as a race photographer, she plays soccer, she refs soccer, she organizes volunteer activities, she designs websites for her friends, she writes technical papers and goes to technical conferences, she edits articles (and will certainly not like this run-on sentence), she makes quilts...she does it all. I don't know if she realizes how much I look up to her, but she should. She came here and she wasn't happy with her job, so she found ways to make herself happy.
My branch chief has as his signature line a quotation from Martha Washington:
I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or happiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.
I think she epitomizes this. I'm not particularly happy with my job and I have been planning my escape, thinking it was an act of courage. I look at her and I realize that while it takes courage to leave, it takes much more to stay.
I want to be more like Sarah.
