I’m a week into the new job, and I have some thoughts.
- It seems to be a good job
- The people I work with are super nice
- My supervisor wants me to succeed
- The locked-in 8-5 schedule is going to take some getting used to
- Change is hard
I live my life in a constant state of unease and despair. This has changed over the years, with a decided improvement over the past, say, five. But most of my life has been spent hanging by a thread from moment to moment. I always believed that disaster was a breath away. That I’m destined to fail, be seen for the life fraud I am, or just continue to exist in the perpetual misery that is life.
Because of these and other mindsets, I’ve developed some pretty unhealthy coping strategies. One of which, I go into everything expecting I am either going to fail in the endeavor or just squeak by; there is no success option.
I get that, in some instances, this could be seen as, at worst, a pragmatic philosophy. I’m thinking of new experiences here. If you try something for the first time, you should not expect that you are going to be the best from the word go. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. For me, there is nothing I could ever do that, at best, is just scraping by. The overwhelming likelihood is that I am going to fail at everything forever.
This mindset creates a lot of anxious thinking as it relates to the new job. Everything is new here. From the culture to the people to the systems to just basic company knowledge. I am at the bottom of all of these learning curves. And from where I stand, I am more likely to fail at each and every new thing than to become simply competent.
I have no self-confidence in any arena that I can hang my hat on and think, “Okay, I’ve got that covered.” And the outlook for getting there is bleak. Now, I know that in a couple of weeks, some of these things might just fade into the background noise day-to-day, but they will not disappear entirely.
Hey, day six is in the books. I learned some new things today, so that’s good. But the Jp in me is certain that I won’t be able to utilize any of that tomorrow or going forward. I get this is all very “woe is me” sounding, Eyore-ish for sure. But it’s me. 100%. I’m sitting on the couch waiting for Nora to get home, and I’m already dreading working tomorrow. Tomorrow will be the day that they figure out they made a mistake and that I’ll never catch on.
You’ll see.