The Easy Way is not an option!
Someone asked if I was still here, still using the blog, that is. Well, the fact is, I have thought of it often, but not long enough to actually get it done! Today my motivation comes partly from knowing someone was looking for it, but also from dreading my set task for the evening, which is to catch up with my bills! :-) But maybe I can get both done!
The following quote reminded me of where I find myself now in terms of work. I have a project, a piece of research and writing, with definite deadlines, and for which I will be paid. And I find myself thinking, oh, my gosh, what HAVE I done!
The quote is from the journal of Lisa Davidson, which she calls her Book of Life, included in an article in May/June 2006 issue of Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spritual Life.
Here I am. All of a sudden my project . . . is now. And I have to set dates, set a venue - O God! I have to talk to someone today! What is this fear in me? What is wrong with me? Why have I put this off? Fear, are you there?
"Yes, you know I am."
Why can't I get around you, step over you, ignore you?
"What do you get out of not doing these things?"
My payoff is believing I am good and talented and capable of all these things that I am not doing. If I actually did them, I might not do them well.
"So you are protecting yourself. It is easier to fear."
At the end of my life, I don't want to say I took the easy way out.
"No, you don't. But I'm not going away. You'll have to learn to use me as a stepping stone."
A little match has been struck in the darkness. A small light, surely, but enough to bring hope.
The quote reminded me of how often I had said, to David and to other people also, that if being afraid was my only reason for not doing something, then I HAD to do it! Fear alone wasn't a good enough reason. That got me packed and to the airport when I went spent a semester in Austria - for that matter, it got me through the application process when I first went back to school full time!
And now, I think, with my part time job and my SS widow's benefit, and a few other things, I can get by - I don't HAVE to take on a project like this! After all, there's a big difference between doing something like this to meet the requirements for a class when the only outcome of doing a poor job would be a lower grade, and doing it as part of a contract where someone will be paying me, and will expect to use the product I give them to move a very public project forward! Once again I find myself hyperventilating and wondering if I can do it!
Now if you said that to me, that you were worried about being able to do a good job at the tasks in front of you, I'd say, What do you mean! Of course you can do it! Quit whining and get on with it!
And now I have the added incentive of knowing how much David sacrificed so that I could go to school and prepare to do a project just like this! The easy way out is not an option. The only way to make the fear less intense is to start the project! Guess I'd better do that!
Actually I started doing it as soon as it was offerred to me, in the sense that I have been thinking about it and making notes and picking up an article here and there. So to NOT do it would have a definite feeling of having decided to take the easy way! The next step, then, is to organize those thoughts and notes into an outline, and to dig into the research. Gotta do it!
posted by Shirley Schuette @ 5:18 PM
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