The 2011 Challenge: Where Did July Go?
The end of July marks the seventh update on the the #Reverb10 prompt for my blog-along with Sunflowerakb and chemgal18.
Here is the prompt for those who may have missed the first post:
What are 11 things your life doesn't need in 2011?
How will you go about eliminating them?
How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?
You can find my list of 11 things here; here's my January update, my February update, the March Edition, April's oversharing, May's steps toward victory and June's triumphs (where I forgot to tell you that Oprah lied about bra fittings at Nordstrom).
Remember item number 10 on the original list? (If not, that's cool, I'll wait 'til you use the link.) It was mostly a snide nod to the other lists I read (not those of my blogging companions, of course, but the vaguely cheesy family-life blogs I stole it from. Their lists were full of bad thoughts and less-than-pleasant personality traits, and of course a couple of references to habits their kids were going to give up*. Fear, routinely, made the list.
*Why do I read blogs I mock, when the mocking isn't funny? Because seven years ago these people were introspective young Jewish women just like me. And now we're all kind of lame on paper. Circle of life, and don't you bright young things forget it.
You'll notice I didn't specify the fear, or have much to say about it. I'm still not sure if I can, and anyway who really wants to totally remove fear from their life? I mean, if I am so devoid of fear that I can comfortably walk through The Douchy Neighborhood where less-young Jewish women are Supposed To Live, I might start popping my collar and sign up for an MBA program as a way to meet eligible bachelors. Some kinds of fear can be good, Functional Literates.
But then there are the other kinds of fear, the kinds that stop you from moving forward. (Believe me, fear of Douchyville keeps you moving forward very quickly, particularly when a crew of BigTen graduates in full-on Abercrombie are headed your way.) There's a particular kind of fear that I don't remember having at the age when everyone else had it, the fear that you aren't measuring up or can't perform at the expected level. I was good at the things I cared about (math, writing, french braids), sucked but had fun at a few others (violin lessons), and really could have cared fuck-all about the rest (wardrobe, physics)--and I was in the right place (small-town Midwest) and time (the grunge era, how I miss you) for those choices to fit in just fine. In grad school, that kind of fear motivated the Mean Girls, and brought more than a few of us down. I learned some of that kind of fear there...some of it was much-needed humility, but some of it was what I learned to call impostor syndrome. (Had I never learned its name, I think I still would have succumbed. But I do wonder about it, yes.)
Taking that kind of fear into Burb set me up for disaster, of course, it being very much the wrong time (the freewheeling mid-aughts) and the wrong place (dude, it was Burb) for the likes of me. Add in a life that I had very much had on mortgage (an adjustable-rate, too, it seemes) and the fear pretty much had me trapped. I had very little right to that life, and I couldn't even be properly grateful for all of the chances I'd stolen. Somehow that twisted in to holding desperately on to this thing that tormented me, in the hope and fear that the rightful owner would take it back.
Shockingly, walking away from it all had its own kind of fear attached. But at least the uncertainty after that decision seemed like a reasonable thing to find fearable.
Now I have this other life. I wonder who the hell I am, sometimes, but I also seem to be enjoying myself quite a lot. But I catch the old fears coming back: "what if I can't learn time-series analysis fast enough" (note that I'm quite sure I'll learn it...ah, the old arrogance resurfaces!) and "what if my data grab was terrible, and it's cycled through a million people before anyone calls me out" (um...can someone teach me how to do a "quality check"?). Everything I do is not enough, of course, because frankly everything I do really isn't enough--there's so much more to learn, and I can barely even ask questions. (Also, we all talk on each other's sentences, which we'll have to stop about yesterday if we're ever going to get anything done.) So of course I have all kinds of fears of not being right, and not getting it right...and I've caught myself thinking the most extraordinary thing.
"Okay, yes, it's possible you'll screw this up. But there's something else you'll have to consider--what if it turns out you can get it done?" Fear identifying possibility, fear as an impetus for moving forward. Embracing fear? (That sounds so freaking corny.)
Don't get me wrong, I still look up shocked at least a couple of times a day. And there are days when I'm not sure what I'm doing playing dressups and wearing curly hair in public. (And, okay, there are days when I fear that I will actually talk about "deliverables" and "incentivizing--" or at least stop using the real words that shock my colleagues a few times a week--today it was "codify.") But there's a different between respectful gratitude for good fortune and guilt for thieving something it turns out you never wanted.
There are bad days, and on some of those I do think "Why didn't I go There?" But I know fear would have followed me, had I left (indeed, in some ways There was a fear-based choice). I know there will always be fear, Here in this place where's there's not quite a space for me. I just have to remember to keep asking the fear, "Okay, but what if I can?"
Here is the prompt for those who may have missed the first post:
What are 11 things your life doesn't need in 2011?
How will you go about eliminating them?
How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?
You can find my list of 11 things here; here's my January update, my February update, the March Edition, April's oversharing, May's steps toward victory and June's triumphs (where I forgot to tell you that Oprah lied about bra fittings at Nordstrom).
Remember item number 10 on the original list? (If not, that's cool, I'll wait 'til you use the link.) It was mostly a snide nod to the other lists I read (not those of my blogging companions, of course, but the vaguely cheesy family-life blogs I stole it from. Their lists were full of bad thoughts and less-than-pleasant personality traits, and of course a couple of references to habits their kids were going to give up*. Fear, routinely, made the list.
*Why do I read blogs I mock, when the mocking isn't funny? Because seven years ago these people were introspective young Jewish women just like me. And now we're all kind of lame on paper. Circle of life, and don't you bright young things forget it.
You'll notice I didn't specify the fear, or have much to say about it. I'm still not sure if I can, and anyway who really wants to totally remove fear from their life? I mean, if I am so devoid of fear that I can comfortably walk through The Douchy Neighborhood where less-young Jewish women are Supposed To Live, I might start popping my collar and sign up for an MBA program as a way to meet eligible bachelors. Some kinds of fear can be good, Functional Literates.
But then there are the other kinds of fear, the kinds that stop you from moving forward. (Believe me, fear of Douchyville keeps you moving forward very quickly, particularly when a crew of BigTen graduates in full-on Abercrombie are headed your way.) There's a particular kind of fear that I don't remember having at the age when everyone else had it, the fear that you aren't measuring up or can't perform at the expected level. I was good at the things I cared about (math, writing, french braids), sucked but had fun at a few others (violin lessons), and really could have cared fuck-all about the rest (wardrobe, physics)--and I was in the right place (small-town Midwest) and time (the grunge era, how I miss you) for those choices to fit in just fine. In grad school, that kind of fear motivated the Mean Girls, and brought more than a few of us down. I learned some of that kind of fear there...some of it was much-needed humility, but some of it was what I learned to call impostor syndrome. (Had I never learned its name, I think I still would have succumbed. But I do wonder about it, yes.)
Taking that kind of fear into Burb set me up for disaster, of course, it being very much the wrong time (the freewheeling mid-aughts) and the wrong place (dude, it was Burb) for the likes of me. Add in a life that I had very much had on mortgage (an adjustable-rate, too, it seemes) and the fear pretty much had me trapped. I had very little right to that life, and I couldn't even be properly grateful for all of the chances I'd stolen. Somehow that twisted in to holding desperately on to this thing that tormented me, in the hope and fear that the rightful owner would take it back.
Shockingly, walking away from it all had its own kind of fear attached. But at least the uncertainty after that decision seemed like a reasonable thing to find fearable.
Now I have this other life. I wonder who the hell I am, sometimes, but I also seem to be enjoying myself quite a lot. But I catch the old fears coming back: "what if I can't learn time-series analysis fast enough" (note that I'm quite sure I'll learn it...ah, the old arrogance resurfaces!) and "what if my data grab was terrible, and it's cycled through a million people before anyone calls me out" (um...can someone teach me how to do a "quality check"?). Everything I do is not enough, of course, because frankly everything I do really isn't enough--there's so much more to learn, and I can barely even ask questions. (Also, we all talk on each other's sentences, which we'll have to stop about yesterday if we're ever going to get anything done.) So of course I have all kinds of fears of not being right, and not getting it right...and I've caught myself thinking the most extraordinary thing.
"Okay, yes, it's possible you'll screw this up. But there's something else you'll have to consider--what if it turns out you can get it done?" Fear identifying possibility, fear as an impetus for moving forward. Embracing fear? (That sounds so freaking corny.)
Don't get me wrong, I still look up shocked at least a couple of times a day. And there are days when I'm not sure what I'm doing playing dressups and wearing curly hair in public. (And, okay, there are days when I fear that I will actually talk about "deliverables" and "incentivizing--" or at least stop using the real words that shock my colleagues a few times a week--today it was "codify.") But there's a different between respectful gratitude for good fortune and guilt for thieving something it turns out you never wanted.
There are bad days, and on some of those I do think "Why didn't I go There?" But I know fear would have followed me, had I left (indeed, in some ways There was a fear-based choice). I know there will always be fear, Here in this place where's there's not quite a space for me. I just have to remember to keep asking the fear, "Okay, but what if I can?"