I think it's about time that I wrote a bit more. I've been trying to write that opening sentence for the last week or so to no avail. Reason? Well I'm not all that sure. First of all there is the fact that I couldn't decide what to write about - a fairly fundamental element of this whole process. Then there is the fact that I just couldn't be bothered writing. It's not that I don't care about the stuff that I might write about, it's just that I don't have the drive to put anything down in words. Those aren't really reasons though so I had to do some thinking. It turns out that I've got something of a complex.
I've written a lot about what I perceive to be my biggest problems over the last three or four years. Some of the stuff I can't even remember - ergo they weren't problems after all - and other stuff has been very much of the time and has petered out. Then there is the stuff that I don't really write about lest this blog becomes one big psychoanalysis where I delve into the inner workings of my mind. Nobody really wants to read about stuff like that unless they can relate to it and I've got other places (shock horror) that I write stuff down. However, there is one thing about me that I have hinted at over the years but I've never really considered it properly until now. Something that we all suffer from to a certain extent and something that will never peter out or be forgotten. That thing is a chronic fear of failing.
First of all, note that I say 'failing' rather than 'failure'. A fear of failure is doomsday stuff relating to how we perceive ourselves as a whole, whereas a fear of failing can be present in everything we put our minds to. One of the weird consequences of this divide is that a fear of failure is much easier to manage, whereas the fear of failing is more difficult to nail down and control.
When you think about how such a fear manifests itself in you, it becomes apparent very quickly that it underpins a lot of the decisions that we make, or the way that we go about things. Most people will recognise this fear of failing, which will depend on what their goals are, from when they have exams, or an interview. To fail at something like an exam could be to not pass it, or it could be to not get the high mark they you want - i.e. it is a highly subjective 'fear'. But how does this explain why I don't write as much as I used to?
It's all about timing for me. I've just come out of the end of the most important exams of my life and gone straight into working more or less full time. I also came out of those exams with, as a lot of people will know, grand plans for 'projects' and various posts that I wanted to write. Therefore, I have prolonged the fear of failing that was present as a result of my exams into other areas of my life - and other areas where I know I rarely fail. I think the short answer to the question posed in the title to this post is that I just haven't given myself a break and consequently I've found myself stifled in all the things that I had planned for summer - including writing in this blog more often.
I'll tell you about the four hour shift that I did only a couple of days after my last exam to explain how this whole thing presented itself. I hadn't worked during the week since last September but I had been doing at least ten to twelve hours every weekend in the interim. I walked into the busy shop, grabbed my till and sat in my usual position before realising that I didn't know what I was doing. All of the product numbers and till functions deserted me - two things that I am good at working with. I felt like I was sitting down at an additional exam and had forgotten all of the cases and statutes that I had spent the last eight months working with. And with that 'examination vibe' came the unnerving fear of failing at what I was doing.
Thankfully all of that has passed at work since then and I feel as confident as someone who has worked there just shy of a year should feel when I walk into the shop. Other areas where things have proved to be harder than I thought are writing this blog and reading about NLP and other psychology related areas - i.e. the 'project' that I so confidently set myself a couple of weeks ago. Things are a bit easier with those things now but that's only because I've had a couple of days off, I've been out with friends and generally taken a load off of myself. It seems that I've said goodbye to the exams and fear of failing that goes with them and I'm starting to get on with the stuff that I want to do. The very fact that I'm writing this (albeit stuttering) blog post is evidence that the summer might just be here.
Thanks for reading and I will be writing more in the coming week. I also promise that I'll plan them out a bit better than this post has been. Oh gosh, have I failed? Thankfully it doesn't feel like it.
Martin.
