(as an aside, it looks like one of the search terms that led readers to my blog this week was “definition of utter ego”. Thanks for calling me egotistical, internet.)
I don’t know if you feel the same way, but I have a tremendously powerful aversion to failure. Despite my belief in the learning opportunities brought on by trying and failing, I still clench up occasionally in the face of a challenge. It’s becoming easier to just step forward and take a chance, but it’s still an up-hill battle some days. I’ve been going toe to toe with just such a situation recently, after I volunteered for the vp of communications role in my local political organization.It turns out, they haven’t had a communications guy for…well no one is really sure, but it’s a long time. So, I’m going into the role with no real guidance or previous documentation to crib from. On top of that, the organization is generally disorganized and low on energy (being third place in a bunch of elections will do that to a group). On the other hand, I’m raring to go. I have 8 hours a day to plot and scheme while building sand castles with the little dude. I am chock full of ideas and motivation. This leads to the challenge: I can either sit and wait and get approval for every step I want to take, even though that approval may take weeks (communication between executive members is also a problem), or I can try my best to follow the rules I can find, and just go for it. Will I end up breaking some rules/duplicating effort/cheesing people off? Oh, probably. But if it’s a choice between doing nothing and being bored, or jumping in and taking some flack if it goes wrong, well, might as well jump.
In mostly unrelated news, I had a chance to chat with another parent of a clever 3-year-old at a barbecue this week. When she was talking about her daughter and the idea of having any other children she said “it would feel like gambling, and I’ve already hit the jackpot”. Exactly. My little dude is so entertaining, so clever, so wonderfully perplexing, and so full of potential, that I want to devote all of my energy and time to helping him become the amazing adult he’s going to be. Also, I’m almost sleeping all the way through the night again, and I look forward to that blissful return to grownup sleeping patterns each and every day.
Chris Loblaw, Author 