Flying blind – 306.5

In terms of blows to self-esteem, this has been hard because I am used to being capable and generous and a valued employee. Coming to grips with losing these things is hard. The other way in which this is really outside of my comfort zone is that there are so many unknowns that are completely out of my control.

I am starting to realize that I am extremely neurotic. I have a sense of humor, and am easy going about a lot of things, so it is not obvious and I know I could be much worse. However, I do worry about things and overdo, especially when I am in charge, and I have a hard time trusting other people to come through. I have looked at my behavior before, and seen it as a combination of two things. One is that persistent feeling of not being good enough, where I feel like I need to overcompensate. Maybe if I bring three dishes to the potluck, instead of just one, I have earned a right to be there. The other part is just not trusting people to be flakes. In a lot of cases it may be fair, and comes from experience, but it is probably still overly judgmental.

I knew that I did this, but had never really pegged myself as neurotic, which I associate with New York and annoying people after reading books by East Coasters who obsess over things that don’t matter to me. (So maybe the annoyance is not because they are neurotic, but because it is about getting their kids into the “right” pre-school and crafting the right image.) I started using the word neurotic for me after two incidents.

One was standing in line at a church potluck, where they were trying something new to get enough people to bring food, but the discussion was on how people get flaky, and the person I was talking to was saying how ninety percent of people are flakes and the rest are neurotic, and I realized I was the rest, but I also realized that we get things done. Then I was volunteering at a blood drive, escorting people to the canteen and making sure they got their drink and snack before leaving. I was stressing, because people were supposed to wait for me to come, and if I was not there fast enough they would just start walking on their own (and we had a fainter and another one who got really weak, so it does matter), so I was always looking and trying to gage how long they would take, and just uptight about it. However, I was told later by one of the phlebotomists that I did a great job, and she was right. I did. I was stressed the whole time, but I did a good job. Neurotic people get the job done.

So, you can call me neurotic, and a control freak, and it is fairly true, though I do not try and control other people, and I can live with that. The problem comes when I am here with something that I can’t control. I like to always have a plan, and I can’t plan now. I can plan trying different things, but I have no idea on what the results will be or when I will know, and that is hard. I have had to set aside plans before (like when I realized I was not going to get married when I was twenty, and that I was supposed to go on a mission), but I can’t even make short-term plans now. I am used to seeing very quickly what is needed for a given situation, and how to implement it and just going for it, and that is not something I can do now.

I recently saw a film clip that I am trying to bear in mind. I think it is called “Facing the Giants”. A football team is doing conditioning, where some players are crawling with other players on their backs. One expresses some doubts, and the coach asks if he can carry one player fifty feet while blindfolded, repeatedly asking the player if he will promise to give his very best. The player agrees, and they start, and it is hard. Because of the blindfold he has no idea how far he has gone, or how much is left, so he can’t pace himself at all, and the coach actually has him go one hundred yards.

I don’t know what I have to do, but I probably also don’t know what I can do. It looks like I’m going to find out.