A moment of eureka!

Recently I’ve been feeling disappointed in myself, like I can’t quite get things right, I’m not the person I think I could be, or think I should have been. Like I didn’t live up to my potential. This is particularly true professionally (as in for all my potential at school and good university grades, I’m plodding away in an unfulfilling dead end job – I know, I know, I should be grateful I even have a job right now)

Job wise, redundancies are yet again on the cards and all around me people are working diligently to prove themselves worth keeping, but me? I can’t seem to muster up the fight and I keep wondering what on earth is wrong with me. Like it or loathe it, I need this job. So what is holding me back? Why am I failing miserably to rise to the challenge?  Why am I practically throwing it away?

I don’t know whether it’s that I see the writing on the wall and don’t feel like flogging a dead horse, maybe sometimes. But you know, thinking about it, I do keep trying, I’ve volunteered for a number of projects, tried to make myself useful wherever I can, but in all honesty I’m finding it really hard to get myself noticed and then when I find myself scratching around trying to look busy but with not much to actually do, I inevitably feel paranoid that I’m about to find my head on the chopping block.

The problem is that I’m quiet, verging on shy even, not especially confident. I often feel like I speak a different language to most people here, I don’t speak fluent “business”, and as a result I’m often at a loss for what to say and how to respond. I’ve been blaming myself for not being dynamic and confident enough, not being enough of a go-getter, missing opportunities. But I really think I’m being way too hard on myself here.

I have always felt different to other people, slightly out of the mainstream, I always believed I would need to carve out my own path because the “main road” wasn’t for me. But then I don’t know what happened, I suppose I got sucked in by the passing traffic and ended up trying to make my way on the conventional road anyway. And for the most part I do a passable job of seeming normal and like everyone else, but inside I repeatedly feel like I can’t quite pull it off, I don’t quite make the grade. I’m a rather quiet and sensitive person and it’s hard for people like me to make an impact on the mainstream. My voice gets lost in the melee, I find it hard to speak up in groups, in meetings and therefore people often overlook me. It really feels that it doesn’t matter how hard I work I’ll never climb far up the business ladder because I’m almost invisible to people. I’m a lot like the city I live in, my charms aren’t so obvious, you need to get to know me first!

For a long time I’ve blamed myself, I’ve fought to toughen up and speak up, but no matter how hard I try to keep “in” I always end up on the outside looking in. And now I’m turning on myself because I’m failing to make an impact, because I can’t keep up when and blaming myself isn't helping anyone. 

I’m starting to wake up to the fact that I’m punishing myself for everything I’m not, and completely ignoring everything I am. Isn't it time I stopped trying to be what everyone else thinks I should be, and let my own light shine. The world is missing out of my own unique skills (whatever they may be!) while I struggle to be something I’m not. I need to find somewhere I will be appreciated and somewhere I can make a genuine difference, where my strengths are respected

So where did this all start? Well, my mum suffered with some heavy duty depression throughout my childhood and couldn’t really cope with having children. I remember at infant school being really familiar with the word “zombie” because she was doped up all the time on tranquilisers (my poor mum has no memory of me at this point of our lives). She used to be constantly at war with all the kids on the street (while I hid beneath the window pretending I wasn’t in) – which set me up as the outsider from the beginning, Inevitably I found it easier to live in a fantasy world.

This isn’t me feeling sorry for myself, or making excuses for how I turned out, neither am I having a dig at my mum  - all of those things implied I think I turned out badly, and I’m starting to see now that really I didn’t, I’m fine as I am. And I love my mum to bits, she did the best she could under difficult circumstances and never really found the right help… but that’s another story.

But I did feel set apart from the crowd from the start. Growing up with a mum with depression gave me much more sympathy and understanding than most other kids, I was more serious, a bit darker and a lot less care free. As a teenager I sought out interests that were alternative to the mainstream and the differences became more pronounced, I listened to heavy metal rather than chart music, I read and enjoyed sci-fi and fantasy – anything that allowed me to escape myself. I read up on different faiths around the world and throughout history, fascinated by Wicca and fairies, all things supernatural. I painted, I wrote, though I barely socialised. And all of this has given me different cultural points of reference to the mainstream today. It’s not only in work that I often feel like I speak another language, it’s in society as a whole.

But strangely for the first time maybe ever I’m starting to see that actually there’s nothing wrong with who I am. Actually I’m ok. I need to forget about what I’m not and nurture who I am, grow those skills and focus on those talents. It’s time I tried to stop pleasing the mainstream and answer more to myself. It’s time to carve out my own path, finally.