Wanting answers

July was when I hit the brick wall.  Everyone did, actually.  There were very few areas that hadn't been knocked aggressively by other pest control companies.  People were giving us less time on the doors, and the complaint "You're, like, the tenth guy here" became more and more common.  It was getting really hot, and all of us were getting really tired.  Not just physically tired, but tired of doing the same things and hearing the same objections over...and over...and over again.  As my team leader Blake put it, "You have way too many sales to go home, but you have way too much time left to be happy about it."  All of us were looking at another two months of selling, minimum, and I wasn't excited.

But that wasn't what bothered me the most.  I had come out to Oklahoma knowing that I was there for a reason, and I had thought about it on and off for the two months I had been there.  When things were easy, I could find fulfillment and success in my sales.  But when things got hard, I knew I couldn't rely on an unstable source of motivation.  At the end of a day full of rejection, all I could think was, "What am I doing here?"  I spent a lot more time thinking about my purpose and why I was really there.  Here are my thoughts on the subject from July 6, 2013:

"The biggest thing is that I still have absolutely no idea why I'm here.  And the summer is half over.  A couple weeks ago in church we had back-to-back lessons in priesthood and Sunday School (both parts of the LDS church meeting) about temples.  I felt that if I wanted to know anything significant about my purpose here, I had to go back to the temple, because that's where I received the revelation to come here in the first place.  And in the past couple weeks, I have had a more and more urgent desire to get back to the temple.  Actually, I think the phrase 'biting need' describes it better.  I want to return to the temple so bad it hurts.  It hurts because I don't want to spend another day out here not knowing at least a little bit of my purpose.  On top of that, I've had several times when I thought I would finally be able to go to the temple, only to have my hopes dashed.  It's like a gnawing void inside me that isn't that big, but it's getting bigger.  And it's uncomfortable every time I think about it.  I need to get back to the temple.  So I'm sure I'll write about whatever happens there.  I hope it's soon."

It was soon.  Six days later, on my birthday, I finally got to return to the temple.  And it was there that I received the answer I never would have expected.