I will be good enough after more learning and experience, but I’m not good enough for the dream jobs yet.
And that’s okay. It makes perfect sense, given that I’m only just learning even how to do the basics for this new career direction I want to pursue. I feel no shame for it. A touch of sadness, perhaps, due to the need to have some patience as I learn and improve, but no wrongness about it, no, ‘I suck,’ about it all.
But for how many other parts of my life do I not allow myself to experience this same scenario in such a way? How many other places do I expect to be better than I am, further along than I am, even though I haven’t yet had the learning and experience within that ‘role’ in order to be a master of it, to be exactly who and how I want to be in that realm? How much strain and stress and shame am I giving myself, when I have no true reason to expect myself to be any better than I am at certain things in this very moment? Relationships with others, with self? Working out solo instead of in group classes? Cooking for two? CLEANING for two? And a dog? Laundry for two? (To be clear, I still suck quite badly at the full laundry process for myself, and have been working slowly on that in recent years. Yet I expect myself to be able to ah for it flawlessly for two people suddenly??) Supporting a house? Paying for life in a house? Supporting a family financially? Managing prayer life for a family? Figuring out things not on my own? Keeping a sleep schedule that is drastically different from someone else in the same house?
I was not a great teacher when I first started teaching. Yes, I was good, especially for a new teacher. I had great instincts and great ideas. I had very good relationships and rapport with students. But I wasn’t a great teacher. It took me a long time to turn a lesson idea into an actually good lesson, let alone great lesson. My overall subject-area effectiveness was somewhere just above the middle, possibly a bit higher. Sure, I encouraged and empowered students to pursue their lives fully. But they didn’t necessarily learn their subject all that well. Now, however, things that took forever or never happened come easily for me. It takes little effort to turn a crap lesson – IN THE MOMENT – into a great and effective And fun lesson (for not just be students, but also for me). I put just as much effort into teaching, but the results are monumentally greater, and in all ways. I love teaching, and I have become a great teacher. But I wasn’t always a great teacher. Just because I was good and I was good enough to become great didn’t make me great then. It only made me great now, down the road of experience and effort and desire – not merely the desire to be great.
That being said, perhaps I could chill a bit on being so harsh on myself and my life for not being better already. Sure, I may be great at much. But that doesn’t mean I have to be amazing at things I have almost no experience or practice actually doing. It’s okay to suck at those things. That’s the point of a neophyte. And I am the one (in my shoes). (And yes, I’m a total nerd and a bit of an idiot, too. Please, enjoy the terrible pun. 😛 )
Post-a-day 2023
hannah ananas 