First off, if you don’t get the reference I’m making in the title allow me to help. Harvey Danger is a RIGHT, people.
I am pleased to report that my dreaded Monday was much better than I suspected. I have realized two things lately: when isolated from a situation, it is very easy to get paranoid about what is continuing to happen without you. I had worked myself up into some fairly awesome levels of concern about a few meetings that were set to take place immediately after my return to the office today and I’m happy to say that most of that worry was unfounded. I had a good long discussion with my supervisor about ratings and performance, and a retrospective of a dreaded user story went MUCH more smoothly than I anticipated. I don’t know why paranoia acts this way, but I do know it is frustrating and relieving at the same time.
I mentioned at the start that I realized two things lately. The second thing is that as I’ve gotten older, I seem to have become comfortable convincing myself that I can’t do certain things.
Examples:
Oh, that piece of the code at work is too daunting I’d best stay out of it.
Wow, learning the guitar is hard so I can’t do it.
I’m not around my beloved dojomates so getting into karate is implicitly harder for some reason.
There’s no way in hell I can learn to build a guitar.
And the list goes on.
What happened to six year old me that had a new interest or hobby every few weeks, and wasn’t intimidated by not knowing about something and instead is buoyed by that fact? Where’s 10 year old me that saw “The Karate Kid” and up and decided that karate would be a fun thing to try out? Where’s 15 year-old me that up and decided he was going to take on the Powerball Quake modification that was abandoned by its creator, despite the hindrance of ZERO coding skills?
A more correct assertion is likely that I’ve just become tired having SO MANY interests and have elected to focus on just a few. While some of this is healthy and necessary for enjoyment of said hobbies, I miss the spirit of not being intimidated by learning new things that I am unfamiliar with.
An excellent example of what I am talking about is my ukulele project. I don’t really have any experience doing anything like this… my grandpa taught me some things about woodworking but not on instruments, so I found it VERY fun and refreshing to have something completely new and fun to try. This is also a great example of my previous point: that kit was purchased for me by my Dad YEARS ago and set dormant on a shelf because I thought I didn’t know enough about how to do it. What a shame.
I don’t really know where I’m going with this post, aside from just acknowledging this fact about myself so I can endeavor to correct it. Before anyone gets all smart-alecky: no, this is not a mid-life crisis (I’m not mid-life yet, nor in a crisis) and you won’t find me buying a Maserati or going skydiving or anything insane. I just want to get back to feeling excited about the learning process again instead of intimidated by it.
That is all. 🙂
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