Patience

When I was eight or nine years old I failed a spelling test for the first time. I came home and showed it to my mom and she said, "yikes, looks like you will actually have to start studying!" To which I replied tearfully, "what good would that do??? If I don't know it, I don't know it!"

My mother still likes to tell that story, not because it's some cute little thought process I eventually grew out of, but because that still seems to be the guiding principle of my life-if I don't know it what good will things like practice and patience do???? If I'm not naturally brilliant then it's hopeless.

Which is not to say that I haven't learned to study over the years or that I don't like to try new things. I firmly believe that part of becoming an adult is that you not only identify your little defects, you actively try to overcome them. But that doesn't mean that my default settings are always kind to me. I still spend a lot of my life having to remind myself to switch them.

This new job is a prime example. My first day the HR rep said to me, "Welcome to T-give yourself six months to really settle in and figure this place out." Six months? This isn't my first rodeo lady. I'll be fine.

Well cut to three months later and I feel a bit like I've been hit by a bus. I came from a tiny tiny little family run company to a giant global monster and it hasn't been the cake walk I excepted out of myself. It probably doesn't help that I have had the same somewhat unreasonable expectations of myself socially as well. Because I do make and keep friends relatively easily I always forget that my pattern in a new place is to hang back a bit and survey the land before I jump in. So my first few months in a new place are typically a bit solitary (solitude and I have a bit of a love-hate relationship but that is a post for another day). You add homesick to lonely and throw in a little bit of professional uncertainty and you get a recipe for a fair amount of staring at the ceiling past your bedtime.

Today was the first day I recognized that I was doing my usual new girl routine and slowly driving myself insane. I took some people up on their offers to help, I relaxed around my boss because he seems to be OK with the fact that I'm still learning, I tried to calm down a little about the holes in my social calendar.

Turns out I'm not perfect about not demanding perfection. Working on it though. Possible future children should probably rejoice.