Digging Deep for My Awesome

Confidence is such a tricky thing. For anyone. I don’t care how many fancy degrees you do or don’t have under your belt, how hard you rock your job or how many awards you’ve earned as mother of the year. Confidence never comes automatically with any of it.

I am struggling to find a little of it myself these days. I privately brim and bubble with so much self doubt. It feels a little pathetic, and lonely, and then just feeds back into the cycle, so I feel worse and silly and not worth the trouble.

How did I get to this point? Why can’t I find my own private brand of “awesome” and feed off of that all day?

I have been out of an office place for almost seven years. And I am starting to re-fire my engines and consider going back (into something, anything) later this year. I don’t feel ready, I don’t know what I am doing, my professional skills feel entirely too atrophied, any competitive edge I thought I had seems long LONG gone.

Something happens when you stay home with your children. Something happens when you bring home your newborn and have to lower your expectations of productivity to a snails pace. Maybe you’ll get a shower in during the day or a bit of food. Maybe. You don’t prioritize your needs and then you don’t expect to owe yourself much. I think I kind of just got used to never quite being 100% so great at anything ever since. Or I assumed I wasn’t. It’s just not about me anymore.

(Ugh. Patheticness. Am already annoying myself with this post.)

Ok, its not as if I shouldn’t feel proud of some of the things I have accomplished. My children are amazing. And I am grateful for that. And to make a general statement that staying home with your kids makes you weak, well, come on. We KNOW that’s not true.

It’s just you have to dig way down deep to reclaim that piece of awesome I had reinforced on a regular basis beforehand.

Because you know that having children just adds a heap load more reasons to doubt myself. A heap load. When it comes to something so dear to your heart, when you have two children’s futures resting in your hands, when its on you to make sure they turn out ok… well, it’s hard to feel like any kind of rock star parent. There is a LOT to mess up, my friends. A lot.

Plus raising children 24/7 with no job review, or cute clothes, or pat on the back from any sort of boss, or flashy benefits assuring that you are SO worth that fancy “mom” title. Well. I usually have no idea if I am even in the ballpark of doing an ok-ish job as a mom.

So I have to dig deep.

Shovel, sling dirt, Yoo hoo, where’s my awesome? Shovel, sling dirt, it’s gotta be down here. Shovel, sling dirt, I think. Shovel, sling dirt, somewhere.

Somewhere, somehow, that old “who gives a crap what they think” will resurface, that swagger, that special something that I used to have.

Meh. Yeah. I don’t know.

And I know its not just me. I know lots of parents feel this way. Or every day folk stuck in jobs that they don’t love but are lucky to have. Or anyone stuck in any kind of rut or wishing for something more or wondering where the old “me” went and if they ever had it in the first place.

I am going to have to muster up a sizeable amount of “I’ve got nothing to lose” if I want to get back out there and work again. I have to find my value, my real worth and then – *eeps* – actually flaunt it. I have to convince someone, anyone that I am worth paying a chunk of money to and that I am so super-fabulous-awesome even though I’ve only worked part time here and there and really the only productive thing I’ve done over the past seven years is write. But how productive is that when it’s amounted to the equivalent of a few grocery trips and tanks of gas? No disrespect, glad to have that much, but how the hell do I, little ol’ me, translate as anything worthy?

Groan. WOW. I don’t like not being confident. I don’t like how I sound. I feel all kinds of icky when I’m feeling sorry for myself. And then I assume if I annoy myself this much, I must be annoying to everyone else so I back off. Don’t mind me. I’m the frumpy mommy mess, talking to myself in a corner. Move along. Nothing to see here.

I SO scream “hire me!” don’t I?

So yeah. Confidence is a tricky thing. Fleeting, here and there, evaporating, condensing, dropping back in, and gone again.

I think its rebuilt on the little achievements and the possibility of doing more the next time. I think its about taking chances and promising yourself that any risk is worth the reward. Its about reminding yourself about what you’ve done before and your ability to do that bigger and better the next time.

My parenting abilities, my writing skills, my job worthiness, my value as a friend, my position as a valuable, contributing member of society.

I’m working on it. I’m digging for it. Deep. Shovel, sling dirt, I remember leaving it down here, somewhere.