I'm about to begin a new chapter, and as usual, I'm dragging my feet. I will start school in about a week, and where I should be feeling bold and nervy, instead I'm overcome with nervousness.
This week I sat down with the chair of the communications department for an orientation. She was the latest and most worrisome voice in a long line of people to raise her eyebrows at the 12 credits I'm about to take, saying, "My, that's a full load."
How bad can it be? I ask myself. It can be my full-time job (along with my other jobs of raising the boys, taking care of the house, and cooking, needles the voice in my head).
My angst grows as each new person comments about what I'm about to undertake. It doesn't matter whether my cousin tells me I'm brave or a friend tells me she admires what I'm about to do, the doubt persists.
At 37, it dismays me that I still know so little about what I want out of life. I long to be confident and self-assured. This is what I want, and this is how I'll get it.
For a brief period, when I worked as a copy editor at the Oshkosh Northwestern, I was proud of what I did. After a year there, though, it felt as though I was devoting my life to my second-shift, weekend-working job, and I left for an administrative assistant job that offered me the same pay and better hours but much less gratification.
Ever since then, I've been in a state of vague embarrassment about the life I lead. When people asked me what I did at Kimberly-Clark: "Oh, I'm just an administrative assistant."
Where did you go to school? "Oh, I just went to Oshkosh," I say. "I really liked it. Great journalism program!" Secretly I'd fret that my education didn't measure up to the one my husband received at Madison.
As a stay-at-home mom, the one job I was always certain I wanted for myself, my insecurity has persisted. "What does your husband do?" I ask other moms like me, as if that defines us in the absence of an actual job.
Once when meeting with a financial adviser, I wanted to assert my worth and told him about the (very) nominal sum I had been making doing a little freelance work. He was so dismissive, he may as well have patted me on the head and said, "That's nice for you, honey. A little pocket change to add to your purse."
Let go of judgment, let go of competition, let go of expectations, my yoga instructor often intones. I try to absorb this into my being, but it's so hard.
Surely I haven't worked hard enough to keep myself in the game. My friend the social worker taught some parenting classes to stay current. Two moms in my book group teach piano, another does regular freelance writing. I tell myself that the one who has a degree in psychology from Madison is better than me, smarter than me. I write a little, clean half-heartedly, cook a lot, but it never feels like enough. We always judge ourselves the most harshly, don't we?
I'm forcing myself to make this change. I'm excited, but mostly I'm freaking terrified. We're putting my family's money on the line. What if can't hack it? What if I'm no good? What if I fail?
I know I need to take it step by step and focus on the small picture, but it's hard to keep my mind from running away. Soon a landslide forms. Even if I do succeed, I'll be 40 and starting at the bottom. Will I ever get a job that will allow me to be there for my family in the way I want and do something gratifying for myself at the same time? And if not, will I have wasted thousands of dollars for nothing?
At this point, I'm making myself make decisions. In the absence of confidence, it's all I can do, really, just keep forcing myself out of my comfort zone.
This week when I received from my school an invitation to a department panel discussion about career opportunities for professional communicators, I felt twin sensations of excitement and nerves. It'd be easier to just stay home, I thought briefly. So I quickly signed up without thinking about it. I'll don some heals and dig deep in my closet for dress pants, and I'll go network.
I suppose it's sad when my wisdom is gleaned from the likes of Grey's Anatomy, watched while folding laundry, but so be it. In one episode, Bailey is
lamenting to the chief of surgery that she brought her son to his first day of school, and he let go of her hand without so much as a look back.
The character is weepy at this milestone and her son's reaction. The chief tells her that when her son released her hand, it was bittersweet, but it also freed her hand for a while to focus on something else.
Both of my hands are mostly free now, and I don't know exactly what I want do with them, but I'm stumbling toward it, and I have to accept the uncertainty. Cautiously, tentatively, here I go.
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