I mentioned in my last post the concept of “this too shall pass”. Admittedly in very vague terms. I’ve got several ideas and concepts I’d like to touch on with this blog, but still a little short on what the execution will look like.
So, this is the first of many/few/none posts I’ll call “Monday Ramblings”.
For today’s Monday Ramblings, I wanted to tell a couple stories specifically around situations both where I wish I had learned to be a bit more stoic and where I maybe too burned out to register anything on my “give-a-damn-o-meter”.
Oh no, the telephone!
My very first assignment, for my first job as a programmer fresh out of the company’s coding bootcamp (more on this someday) was a very anxiety inducing time. This was a time before imposter syndrome was so commonly mentioned and when you got it in your head that you sucked, you just were certain you sucked.
Having grown up in a very homogeneous area of the south, my ability to understand anyone with a differing accent was terribly underdeveloped. Generally this wasn’t a problem as email communication was the most prevalent for the project. But there is always that one guy, that just wants to get on the telephone and save an e-mail chain (spoiler alert, I’m now one of those folks).
So, Bobby Wantstocall sets a meeting invite for 8AM Monday morning. This leaves me an entire weekend of anxiety. I thought I was going to die. What if I can’t figure out what to do? Will I get kicked off the project? Will I get fired? Worst of all, will I have to go back to working as a retail security guard (Jeff Blart Store Cop). My brain speedometer stops at 85mph like an ’87 El Camino. But also like an El Camino, it can run a lot faster than the speed-o will read-o.
When the time arrives, we get on the phone and as expected I have a hard time understanding. Both from dialect differences but also just my lack of technical experience at the time. But guess what. I did understand enough. I did figure out the solution to the problem. And learned new things in the process.
This anxious feeling is one that I became awful familiar with over the next few years. Through repeated exposure to situations outside my comfort zone (phone calls, vague functional specs, and imposter syndrom) a and perhaps some overall mental fatigue, I began to shed some of that anxiety. I began to pick up some optimism with each solved problem. “If I could solve that crazy problem, there’s nothing I can’t do”.
Well after I left that first job, I was introduced by the definition of where I had landed with my little coping mechanisms. “This too shall pass”. What does that mean to me?
It means, no matter how hopefulness the situation has seemed time and time again, I’ve always prevailed. Maybe others could have done it better than me. But on my own personal scale, I at least survived until the next big bundle of anxiety.
Life later dealt me a mentally destabilizing series of events. I often mention from time to time: “I’ve already experienced the lowest of my lows. Its always uphill from here”. But even those events, that threatened the very foundations of my mental stability, passed.
These days, I chuckle at people with phone anxiety. But I’ll never forget my phone call with “Bobby”. Its a great reminder of how far I’ve come.
Jeff of All Trades 