"Confidence. It's not something you keep just for yourself."
- Musashi #9 Vol. 16
I have lost all confidence in myself. It didn't happen all at once. It's been gradually wearing away like my energy and memory and ability to focus. Its loss, like theirs, can be traced back to that injury working for the federal government in 2002. I lost hope in the government and justice. I started struggling more and more in school and at work, and I now feel mostly useless, crippled, and incompetent.
It's not a great time to be trying to find other jobs. I can't sell myself because I feel like no buyer would want such damaged goods. How can I, in good conscience, try to convince someone to hire me when I wouldn't hire me? I admit I would get some degree of satisfaction if I managed to obtain another government job (this one without any of the significant physical hazards of the last one), but that desire to be petty hasn't been enough to motivate me to finish a lengthy government resume.
Oddly enough, I started feeling more optimistic about my chances as I was looking through a book about how to make a great government resume. Focus on what you actually do at work; match it up to skills mentioned in the job announcement and questions (in one case, all 83 of them). Research the agency to find out what the job really involves, and find keywords. Use principles of graphic design to format a text resume that is easily readable, scanable, and usefully written. It helps that the only job I am not too crippled for is fairly entry level, so much so that my grades in college could potentially get me hired at a higher pay band even with no practical knoweldge/experience.
Yeah, so that last bit's unlikely, but it's possible on paper, and I have been too chummy with impossible lately.
When my parents, who feel helpless, even though they are doing way too much to help me already, talk to me, I stress the impossible to them because it's what I know. Don't expect me to be able to do what I could ten years ago; I'm too broken to do those things now. I am a different, lesser person, crippled in more than just body. I hate this state of being even more than they do, and my face is rubbed in it every minute I am awake (and there are far too many of those minutes a day, which is part of the problem).
So much is impossible for me that it's been a while since I've even bumped into the positive possible. I've stopped looking for it, even. It would take a miracle to save things now, and a miracle may not be what God is planning for me. Maybe even more quietly epic failure is His plan for me, and, honestly, I had a great run there for 21 years, so who am I to complain?
Anyway, this past Tuesday, when I got past being sarcastic about all the skills and experience I lack and my crappy retail job and my incompetent boss who is now actively trying to fire me since we have yet another new store manager (my incompetent boss is trying to use the confusion of his ascendence in this time of holiday hell to her advantage to fire me without any oversight) and my discouragement over all the skills I polished in college and never got to use, I realized that completing this resume could be more of a writing and style exercise, like something I did in technical communication classes back in the day.
I used to be good at learning a lot through negative examples. Why couldn't I spin things at my current job in a more positive light now? (Because I'm out of practice, is the simple answer.) But the light was there, and I could see that maybe the tunnel had edges, a long way away.
Today I was exercising on a stair machine on my day off. As usual, I was reading a book (Musashi #9 volume 16, which came out 19 months after volume 15). As I had suspected, a particular character died, and after that story finally wrapped up, there was a short side story told from the point of view of a girl who was really unhappy with her personality and who wanted to change. She encountered #9 and came to the realization I quoted at the beginning of this piece, so you'd realize the end was going to be uplifting.
"Confidence. It's not something you keep just for yourself."
Oh.
I know I've been hurting my parents and concerned friends with my lack of confidence. It made me feel guilty and a little irritated. Why should my problems affect them? And what was I supposed to make them feel better? It was my problem in the first place, and I can't fix it, not as broken as I am. I hate disappointing my parents, previous witnesses to most of my triumphs, bewildered long-distance spectators of my slow destruction and descent. A recent phone call reminded me of this fact.
This quote and my pursuit of this job were kind of like a heartening, non-physical kick in the pants. Maybe I'm too tired to fake confidence for myself, but I think I need to for my parents and other concerned people their age around me who are worried about me.
And maybe, just maybe, this time I'll be able to fake it first and long enough that it will grow to fill in the space I've left for it. A person can dream, right?
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Sounds like a plan... honestly, though, I think half the time we grow by taking on things we can't do/faking things we aren't and then learning do/be them... kind of like my daughter is learning to walk a bit by leaning forward and then trying to get her feet to catch up.
ReplyDeleteYour sense of humor, ability to describe life in a compelling way, and status as arbiter/introducer of good reading material hasn't changed much :-)
Thanks. :)
ReplyDeleteYeah, I feel the same way about the ways we grow personally and spiritually. People always tell you to be true to yourself and give you other similar advice, but in my personal experience, we can change the things we don't like about ourselves best by pretending/creating new/better selves and trying to grow into the mold. I like the way you put it above.
I wonder if you'll think about that even more as your baby grows and you teach her what's right/wrong and appropriate/inappropriate and tell her she has to do the right thing whether she feels like it or not. :) It's something I think about at times.
There's a book series I'm reading right now that is probably one of the most offensive (funny) things I've ever read, and it seems to appeal to a very narrow audience, and I was trying to articulate what I see in it that resonates with me as someone who has no experience with the subjects and settings in the book. I've decided it's the way that the main character has basically taken on an identity that he abhors and finds repugnant but is really good at, and his identities clash all the time in ways that make him question who he really is and should be. And if you read even one chapter of it, you'd probably think I was crazy for saying that or even analyzing it. :)