I have had all sorts of thoughts on my mind lately, but I have been too busy with other things (or just trying to catch five to relax) to post about my daily random thoughts. Here are my excuses:
1) I spend most of the day at work.
2) When I leave work, I usually have a few errands/chores on my list and plans to make dinner, so I often hit the computer for just a few minutes to check some of the blogs I read before my roommates get home. This is not a good time or sufficient time to write about anything.
3) I am distracted by meowing kittens, who have a very valid point: why would I choose poking an electronic box over petting loving animals?
4) We’ve had friends over most evenings and have been gaming and doing other things with them (which is a really nice distraction).
5) I prefer spending time with my fiancé to sitting alone at my desk, pecking away at my computer.
6) We are still playing World of Warcraft (granted, at a reduced level some weeks), so some weekends or weeknights I am tied up with that.
In some ways, blogging less has been very beneficial. When I have had a chunk of time to sit down and write, I have been in a pretty decent mood and most of my posts the past several months have been somewhere in the realm of positive/cheerful/helpful– or at least sad-but-doing-OK. I haven’t really ranted about anything much lately and I haven’t ticked off anybody as far as I know. I haven’t gone on any wordy rampages about life.
I don’t intend to start spewing offensive content at this point, but I kind of miss the “what’s on my mind” posts (as opposed to the “what I’ve been doing” posts) that aren’t being written as frequently anymore.
One thing I have been thinking about lately are coping skills that we learn in life. It seems like a lot of us growing up in my generation were routinely praised and touted as wonderful at the things we were good at, but we were not motivated or challenged enough to take on things that we were not as good at. In some cases I guess we were initially challenged, but quit paying attention to those things in lieu of the things we were better at.
An example for me was dance class. My mother regularly enrolled me in a couple of dance classes per week from the time I was five years old until I entered fifth grade. I took ballet, tap and jazz classes. In fifth grade, I decided that dance would require too much time and I had more homework, so I dropped the activity entirely that year and never picked it back up.
This is OK. Part of living life is trying things and deciding what you like, what you are good at, and what you are willing to invest energy in. This process of discovery applies to hobbies, as well as work life.
But sometimes people are afraid to try new things. We develop prejudices, insecurities, and dislikes that are unfounded and unproven. We place restrictions on ourselves.
Example 1: I had an irrational fear of making phone calls and generally talking on the phone when I was younger. I didn’t think I was very good at dealing with people over the phone. Then I worked for a year at a tech support call center. While I decided I didn’t want a job that entailed being on the phone constantly all day, I found out that I could pretty easily handle the job and deal with people over the phone. My fear of phones was blown out of the water.
Example 2: A young acquaintance of mine is afraid of working with people. She works at a very part-time job where she handles animals (rather than people) and can spend her free time writing, which is what she really wants to do for a living. Unfortunately, her financial situation is very limited because she is not willing to consider applying for a lot of jobs since most jobs involve dealing with people on some level. She has never gone to college to pursue the education and training that would enhance her writing skills and perhaps allow her to do that sort of work for a living. I suspect she is afraid to do that, also. Her fears are limiting what she can do with her life and her chances of future success.
In general, people are happier and more successful doing things that they like and things that they are good at. However, to do those things, we often have to try the unknown and learn ways of coping with the elements of those tasks we don’t like or aspects that are hard for us. More often than not, we have to do at least a few things we don’t like to ultimately reach our goals. We may have to work at a job we don’t particularly love or learn better ways of dealing with difficult people. We may have to seek further training or learn skills that we didn’t think we would like. We may have to do things that we are simply quite average or BAD at.
Is it even possible to be successful if you can’t learn to handle the things you don’t like and do necessary things that you are not necessarily great at?
I have watched people (myself included) look for all kinds of loopholes and exemptions and flutter and stall and it still seems to come back to the same point. The world is everybody’s and you can define your place in it. It is better to approach that with as much flexibility as you can wrangle within yourself every day, otherwise you are limiting yourself.