personal growth

You know how when you move or start working in a new neighborhood you initially don't know where anything is and have to rely on maps or directions(electronic or otherwise) to find anything at first but eventually you fill out the holes in your knowledge and rely on those aids less and less? I've had to do that a couple times at my current job, learning both the locations we have for deliveries, in addition to needing to know how to get around, I need to know how things are laid out so I can assign deliveries to drivers properly. It's a quality that nothing but time and practice will improve, regardless of how smart you are.

I hate feeling like that, not knowing what I am doing is scary for me and it is that learning curve that is my biggest obstacle when learning a skill or changing jobs. Even though i know intellectually that anyone else just starting out/just hired is in the same boat and I am not expected to be an expert right away, I still feel very unsettled until I gain that expertise.

I am feeling like that pretty much all the time these days, learning skills and knowledge bases that I literally haven't ever attempted, and knowing that no matter how much I absorb of this, I will still have to go through the process again when I actually start interviewing and begin a new career. Historically it's been an obstacle for me, I have actually had job interviews that I didn't go to because of that feeling, it was more comfortable for me to be unemployed than it was to contemplate dealing with that. I mean the depression probably had a lot to do with it too, but there you go.

In a way I feel sort of good though, because despite feeling uncomfortable, and despite putting myself out there being high on the list of things I hate doing, I am still planning on doing it anyway, and I am still studying and making progress, on that note I have caught up a fair bit and should be nicely on schedule now. Anyway it's a level of growth that took a while for me and it is good for me to see, when I reflect on myself, that I am not tempted to just quit and resign myself to my current situation, which, although I hate it, is technically "good enough". That has not been a decision I have been able to make consistently in the past.

Part of it surely is self preservation, I might die if I keep up they way I have been going. That's important to be sure. But it isn't the whole story.

I am not saying that I know what the whole story is, I just know that this year was the one where I was finally able to make a change, knowing that it would make me uncomfortable and put me in situations that I do not like, but being able to make it anyway.

That's been on my mind lately.