Smash365: Fear

Since it appears that the #Trust30 writing challenge is up ::sigh:: I have decided to try the Smash365 writing prompt instead. Today’s is:

Smash365: Fear

Jul 26, 2011 by cara moulds

“Fearlessness comes from a habit of doing lots of little things that constantly put you out of your comfort zone.” – Marty Wilson

What are you doing today to take you out of your comfort zone?

I feel like I’ve been in a rut for a while. Or like things don’t take me out of my comfort zone. Or that I’m always out of my comfort zone. All at the same time.

Work is my lease comfortable person. She exists in an environment that is not comfortable for her. That does not suit her personality, that makes her want to crawl out of her own skin. Every day here is an attempt to push myself just one more day beyond my boundaries of tolerance. And make others believe that I do, in fact, belong here.

The pretending has an odd effect. I feel split to my core. That this is not some place I belong or should be. On the other, the playing a part for 9 hours a day I occasionally slip fully into the roll, even for just a moment or two I feel like I belong in a meeting, talking to a vendor, performing my analysis. The disconnect comes in the fact that I am very capable of doing all of these things, though they do not feel like my true calling. They are something I am good at, not something I am passionate about…. Which is where this place is both comfortable, because it is not challenging, and not because it takes me away from my identity.

This however, is not what the prompt cues.

Going back to school. Again, both in and out of my comfort zone. I will be embarking on a challenge into a field that is  utterly new. It doesn’t completely feel like it’s pushing me out of my comfort zone because I thrive in an academic environment and clearly I have gone to school before. Also, the psych field I have dabbled in amatuerly. However to do it with the mindset of becoming a professional in the field, now that, is pushing the bounds of what I am accustomed to. It’s a field where I do not know how to go about finding my footing. I have no idea of the field work, interactive processes that accompany preparing you for the working world in this field. Engineering is cut and dry. Do the work, get an internship, do what you’re told, graduate, get a job. It’s all very objective. Psychology is a little less rigid. It seems more subjective. I’m intrigued. It will be a way to use my brain in a field that is utterly foreign in a way that I do not get to normally.

It’s a little scary to take the step outside of my established environment. Scary, but exhilarating.

Side note: I cleared up the hold on my transcripts and hopefully I’ll be able to arrange a meeting with an academic advisor by Friday =)

I also wonder if I even have a comfort zone. I don’t seem to be comfortable anywhere, at any time, save for brief moments of it where my mind is taken to places of fleeting peace. When I feel like I’m floating outside of my Self it’s difficult to settle into my own skin long enough to obtain that sense of comfortable calm. The best I can usually hope for is to occupy my mind so much so that I forget my malaise. This is why I constantly push myself, try new things, explore new avenues of adventure and information. Perhaps this is why I do not often feel outside of my ‘comfort zone’ because every chance I get I push my limits into a new venue. Nothing seems foreign to me, because often everything is. Who I am, what I’m doing, where I’m going, how I go about doing it… every time I try something new, it makes going outside of my comfort zone, a comfort.

x-posted: Borderline