I feel like I'm playing the waiting game with so much in my life right now. It's not that I lack patience - believe me I've got tons - but that I feel somehow... Unprepared for whatever is to come, and that has always been one of my strong points.
I'm fairly decent at seeing what is generally going to happen before it does, and I at least get a little prepared for it - and I'm not even talking emotionally. I use the library heavily for researching things, and I have a wide range of friends who're very open to sharing their experiences and teaching me when I seek advice and their thoughts.
For the things I do not see coming, that do surprise me, I've also generally been good on my feet and able to adapt to new or changing things quickly. I'm very good at slowing things down, and giving myself time to figure stuff out.
But now... I don't feel a lack of confidence at my ability to do so. But I don't feel confident either. There have been plenty of times when I've gone into a situation completely confident of one thing; if I work hard at it, listen, pay attention, be sensitive to the situation, I WILL figure out what to say and do.
I might have zero idea entering the situation of what the hell to say or do, but I had that feeling right in my gut, that confidence, that the more I felt things out, the better picture I'd get and with that better picture I would find out how to make the situation better - not fix it, or make it perfect - but just simply better.
And I can't find that confidence. It's like it's missing... Misplaced would be more accurate. It's somewhere there. I just can't find it.
So I sit, playing the waiting game. Some of this stuff is out of my control, some of this stuff I've given up control of and other stuff I never had any control of but I know I'll have a say in how the aftermath goes.
But right now, I'm on the sidelines... And I suck on the sidelines... And when I think about what is to come, I don't feel that "magic" at the moment that not only will I be able to handle the coming storm, but that I will excel at it and when it's all said and done the only thing left from that storm will be a rainbow when I'm done with it.
And yet, rereading this blog, I realize something. I'm not even worried about finding it. Do I think I'll simply just get "it" back when things start going bad? Is it truly a light switch inside me that just gets flipped?
And is that lack of worry actually the dim glow of that confidence? Is it hiding under the surface, "lost", keeping my nerves calm? Who knows.
I guess we'll find out. Such is life, after all. |