Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Doing It Scared.

I feel like I am standing on the edge of a precipice this morning..

Last week was tough, really tough, 6 months of living so very differently, and I was doing okay until my dance friend announced that she's going through the same struggle, and younger daughter moved on from denial into anger, while daughter the elder buried herself in studying for her Freshman finals (4.0 in 'English as narrative', one point shy of a 4.0 in Statistics, last final for Law class is this morning and she is holding her breath!).

It's been fun!  I felt terrified, overwhelmed, disoriented, we've been trying to remortgage the house and there've been some weird things with that, it seemed like it wasn't going to work out and I was going to have to continue trying to afford the extortionate rates while others have a nice new low rate mortgage, it was all very difficult and it didn't feel like there was much solid ground for me to stand on. 

I was thinking about potential work, what could I be?

- occupational therapist?  I already have teaching qualifications and experience, working in schools as an OT would be my sort of thing... yeah, but basically need medical school to qualify, unless I am an 'assistant', which wouldn't earn enough money to keep me, let alone the kids.

- Physical therapist?  Still helping people, which would be great, but still needs a lot of medical learning, don't have the time or the money for that much training.

- NIA teacher?  Oh yes please, but it would be a couple of hours a week and would not pay the bills, would be fun though!

- Life coach - my dance teacher says 'life coach', and some of you have said similar things, get paid to advise, support, encourage, help make plans, to basically do all the things I already do with people...  so I looked that up online, too, and found that there is training and support for starting one's own business, and that it's new, but it could be a big thing in the next few years.

All of this was madly swirling in my head, none of it looking like a solution to the economic issues in my near future, all of it feeling like too much, too difficult, too impossible. 

I kept hearing my friend Sharon's advice - do what's necessary, and then what's possible, and pretty soon you'll be doing the IMpossible.  I've done what's necessary for the last 6 months, I'm feeling like it's time to go for 'what's possible' but that's scary and overwhelming, and the way forward is unclear.

And then at the weekend my friend posted on Facebook that she's looking for someone who can write in HTML code, to help her with an excess of work, and I thought 'well, I used to be able to program, how hard can it be?', so I went and found a free tutorial to get started, and by the end of yesterday I had a working webpage that I could change font size, colour, background on, I could write a bulleted or numbered list, I could bold or italicize things, I could insert a picture, or a link to a webpage - it was fun, and DD2 was very impressed that I could make an internet page - I was pretty impressed myself! 

I messaged my friend, to say 'hey, how complicated do these clients of yours need things to be?  Do you think I could learn this stuff in time to be able to maybe help you out?' and I got back...

"Here's another tutorial so you can learn some more about it, I think you can do it, oh, and by the way, I know a couple of life coaches, want me to pass on your contact information?". 

And there it is - the precipice.

A turning point?  The opportunity that I've been believing would present itself at some point?  Maybe, maybe not, maybe TWO. 

I found this at the weekend, whilst searching for the author of a quote that had come to my attention... it's an excerpt from a blog post, and the author is quoting a story from The Reader's Digest. 

The blog author writes - "I read the story in Reader’s Digest, and I haven’t read the Digest in decades. But the story has stuck with me through the years. 

The multistory office building was burning, and its occupants streamed down the stairwells, parting to get around the woman standing frozen at the top of a flight of stairs. Finally a man stopped beside her and said quietly, 
"You have to go down." 
She replied, "I can't." 
He said again, "We have to go. Now." 
"No!" she repeated, "I can't do it." 
"I'll do it with you," the man said, taking her arm. 
"But I'm scared," she cried. 
To which he said, "Then do it scared."."

I have spent the last week crying "But I'm scared", but this morning I said yes to my friend, yes, go ahead and connect me to your friends, and now I'm off to take the second step down the staircase, and investigate that tutorial she sent me. 

This is me, doing it scared. 

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