Guilty of Hope

A funny thing happened to me this week. I got accused of being too hopeful. Now, if you know me. You’ll know I’m a stressor, a worrywart, and an anxious bundle of curly hair that doesn’t like change. Yet, I was driving with a coworker the other day and we were talking work stuff. There’s a lot of things up in the air at my work. A great potential for a lot of change that it has some people on edge. Every workplace has a rumor mill and mine is no different. People talk because they want to understand what’s going to happen. Who’s going to stick around. What challenges are we going to face? They want to be prepared for what comes our way. Sometimes, its the only thing people talk about.

Then there’s me.

The way I see it, I just got full time, I’m not going anywhere. Things are changing and I can’t stop them. All I can do is roll with them and take them a day at a time. The team I’m a part of proved just yesterday that we can handle ourselves. We may not have all the answers in the moment, but we get stuff done.

I was impressed with the way things worked out yesterday and proud of the team as well. We got our animal routines done early and that left the afternoon open for projects. Yet, before we could head off, someone pips up with an “Oh…guys…we’re supposed to do this task (that everyone forgot about) today.” We had to do it that day because that’s when forklift guy said he could help us. The task was to retrieve a really heavy thing from one building and move it to another so it could be used there.

We got to work. Someone called forklift guy to make sure he could help us. We had to go into another animal team’s area, so I called them to make sure it was alright for us to come down–they were thrilled. They wanted the heavy thing gone from their building. Then we realized the truck we currently have wasn’t going to handle the heavy thing, so we needed to needed to see if a loaner truck was available. It worked out because the team that was using the loaner truck was driving it up to drop it off when we called them.

So, we had the forklift guy on the way, the other animal team notified, and the truck that we needed. We loaded up and escorted ourselves through the zoo to pick up the heavy thing. The other animal team had our object ready to go when we arrived. We got the truck in place. Forklift guy moved the object to the truck, we secured it, and the other animal team waved goodbye and told us to never bring that object back to their area as we drove away.

We got the heavy thing in place at one of our buildings just in time for closing.

What may happen in the next few days, weeks, or months may be completely up in the air. We could lose team members. Routines may change. Dynamics could shift. It could very well be a difficult transition. Yet, I think about days like yesterday how we handled a task we forgot about and how everything fell into place for us to get that task done. It all worked out and we worked well together.

I guess that’s one of the reasons why I’m hopeful moving forward. No matter the changes, I’m sure everything will be alright. We can take it a day at a time and handle the changes as they come up, because we’re capable. There’s no use stressing over it, after all, when all you can control is you.

I hope you find yourself guilty of being too hopeful moving forward. It’s a good way to stand out.