I feel much better today after finally catching up on sleep. 12 hours of shut eye could work wonders. To catch up on sleep and rest is the best form of self care that I could think of to compensate what my body and brain went through hours before. My days rarely start early since leaving my job in the academe more than a year ago. But after receiving an email related to a job application I sent last month, I found myself up and about before dawn yesterday. 

How it feels to be an early bird and alone in the room.

I haven't travelled to the city in the last two years for career-related matters. And I must admit that I had mixed feelings doing so. I am no longer used to going to cities outside my hometown, including this one. Nowadays, trips that would take even just an hour ride away is already considered far and a bit stressful to me.

A lot of things have definitely changed in the city since the last time I was there, that when someone from human resources inquired if i had difficulty in locating their office and if I got lost, I honestly, yet candidly replied with a yes.

Days ago, I read one Facebook post that mentioned the importance of showing up, giving your best, and taking small efforts. It said we don't need to have everything figured out today. So even if I felt uncertain, and despite being unable to sleep the night before because of overthinking, I still appeared in person as a form of professionalism and courtesy to an institution who took time to read my CV, and saw it to be worth considering for the next step. 

Taking a battery of tests for four and a half hours may be challenging and mentally exhausting but doing so also gave me an idea as to how other offices conduct them. And if there was something that made me feel good about myself, it was I showed up and went through it.

While there's no certainty that things will be in my favor, the only thing that I can be proud of at least for now is that I tried and gave it a shot. I showed up (and on time!) even without sleep, and accomplished everything from start to finish even if my brain already wants to shut down a number of times. But what I appreciate most about the whole experience that I went through yesterday was the chance to meet kind people from the office that invited me, to the strangers that I met on the street.

I dropped by this mall chapel before heading home not just to pray for a number of intentions for myself and for other people, but to thank Him for allowing me to survive the day, and my daily ordeals. The past months were (and still remains to be) challenging for me that even saying what I want and need in prayer has been hard for me to do. But during my visit to this place yesterday,  my own prayer was composed of a few words:

For God to just look into my heart in the absence of all the right words.