I’ve written often about my fear of failure, and my equally daunting fear of success. These fears have sat equally sour in my belly since high school. I’m afraid to be nothing, afraid of not fulfilling my purpose, but I’m equally afraid of how my life might change if I do succeed in doing what it is that same gut keeps niggling at me over and over, telling me I’m meant to do.
If only that gut spoke plain English.
But it doesn’t. It speaks in code. It speaks in hieroglyphics, in tongues at which I’m left to decipher and guess.
I know it’s always a mistake when I ignore my gut. Lord knows, ignoring that flip in the hollow of my stomach before I got into a car with a guy I didn’t know when another guy I did know asked his “friend” to give me a ride home was a big mistake. Did my “friend” know this was his bud's M.O? I was too ashamed, so I never told. How many girls had the bud done this to? Had anyone else ever reported it? Had there been some kind of secret handshake that passed between them? Was my friend possibly in on it?
It was the 80s. We chalked it up to a bad date—a bad choice, my own damn fault (which is complete and utter bull$hit, if you wondered!)—and we moved on.
But you never really do.
You just learn, time after time, to question and question again your own intelligence, your own abilities. You question your own gut’s messages about right or wrong, its whispers about do it or don’t do it, its twinges and twists and which way they mean for you to go.
Speak English, damn you!
Just tell me, please. What is it you want me to do? Which answer is the right one to help me feed my family?
“Girgle, girgle,” crickets….
—sigh--
Somehow, when it's about your own life, Intuition can be a bitch, and Doubt, her master.
Then something I spent an entire weekend berating myself over for yet another failure, with perspective morphed into opportunity, into action, an honest to goodness aha!
I made a phone call. I felt certain.
What I thought I felt certain about became something else entirely. A lunch turned into a three-hour meeting, into a tour, into another impromptu meeting, into a follow-up meeting next week.
I’m in awe, I’m awakened, and I have a vision that has never been clearer.
Everything in my life has led up to this presentation next week, to this moment. The dots connect, the failures make sense, every moment of the last two years of hard work and educating myself, the odd job, the “gifts” that seem not at all related, slip effortlessly together with a clang of realization.
All of this is to say that, my cooking demonstration planned for The Box Factory on December 11th has met with some challenges that make it impossible to pull off in the time-frame I’d allotted myself (so we'll do it in late January, likely that week before the Super Bowl).
But please stay tuned for something that could be, that will be, bigger and better and incredibly exciting!
I’m working on the presentation of my life this week. So don’t think I’ve buried myself under a bush to lick at my wounds…I’m strategizing, I’m pulling it all together like never before.
I’m listening to my gut and writing down its every note, because for once its intentions are clear and beautiful as perfect harmony. Which, when I remember what it felt like to sit in the middle of a choir of voices, brings me to tears, each and every time. Heck, maybe one day I'll incorporate that into this little project of mine, too.
**If you didn't already, check out http://www.supportacappella.org -- who needs instruments?! Music ed for FREE!**
Just Write is a weekly writing exercise sponsored by Heather of the Extraordinary Ordinary, WHO ROCKS! Hadn't participated in awhile, but this reflection definitely fits.
If only that gut spoke plain English.
But it doesn’t. It speaks in code. It speaks in hieroglyphics, in tongues at which I’m left to decipher and guess.
I know it’s always a mistake when I ignore my gut. Lord knows, ignoring that flip in the hollow of my stomach before I got into a car with a guy I didn’t know when another guy I did know asked his “friend” to give me a ride home was a big mistake. Did my “friend” know this was his bud's M.O? I was too ashamed, so I never told. How many girls had the bud done this to? Had anyone else ever reported it? Had there been some kind of secret handshake that passed between them? Was my friend possibly in on it?
It was the 80s. We chalked it up to a bad date—a bad choice, my own damn fault (which is complete and utter bull$hit, if you wondered!)—and we moved on.
But you never really do.
You just learn, time after time, to question and question again your own intelligence, your own abilities. You question your own gut’s messages about right or wrong, its whispers about do it or don’t do it, its twinges and twists and which way they mean for you to go.
Speak English, damn you!
Just tell me, please. What is it you want me to do? Which answer is the right one to help me feed my family?
“Girgle, girgle,” crickets….
—sigh--
Somehow, when it's about your own life, Intuition can be a bitch, and Doubt, her master.
Then something I spent an entire weekend berating myself over for yet another failure, with perspective morphed into opportunity, into action, an honest to goodness aha!
I made a phone call. I felt certain.
What I thought I felt certain about became something else entirely. A lunch turned into a three-hour meeting, into a tour, into another impromptu meeting, into a follow-up meeting next week.
I’m in awe, I’m awakened, and I have a vision that has never been clearer.
Everything in my life has led up to this presentation next week, to this moment. The dots connect, the failures make sense, every moment of the last two years of hard work and educating myself, the odd job, the “gifts” that seem not at all related, slip effortlessly together with a clang of realization.
All of this is to say that, my cooking demonstration planned for The Box Factory on December 11th has met with some challenges that make it impossible to pull off in the time-frame I’d allotted myself (so we'll do it in late January, likely that week before the Super Bowl).
But please stay tuned for something that could be, that will be, bigger and better and incredibly exciting!
I’m working on the presentation of my life this week. So don’t think I’ve buried myself under a bush to lick at my wounds…I’m strategizing, I’m pulling it all together like never before.
I’m listening to my gut and writing down its every note, because for once its intentions are clear and beautiful as perfect harmony. Which, when I remember what it felt like to sit in the middle of a choir of voices, brings me to tears, each and every time. Heck, maybe one day I'll incorporate that into this little project of mine, too.
**If you didn't already, check out http://www.supportacappella.org -- who needs instruments?! Music ed for FREE!**
Just Write is a weekly writing exercise sponsored by Heather of the Extraordinary Ordinary, WHO ROCKS! Hadn't participated in awhile, but this reflection definitely fits.
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