Faith

February has been a very busy month. And if one more person tells me change is good....

Nah, I'm just kidding. Change is good. But sometimes it's really effing hard. It's hard to go from your comfortable but slightly shitty status to something new, different, scary, intimidating, probably ultimately better, but who knows how long that's gonna take...you get the gist.

Most of you get to this blog via Facebook, so you know that I'm planning on going into nursing. I'm looking at another three years of school. At least. Probably more like four, while working as much as I can to keep the bills paid. And as much as people keep telling me I'll make a great nurse (and thank you, each and every one of you, it really means a ton to hear it) and as much as I believe it myself, it's still a big unknown. I need faith. And I got a little bit of faith today.

I've been working with my dad for the past year and a half. The big plan was for me to take over the family screen-printing business, DM Graphics. My dad has built up this company over the past almost 20 years, he's done a great job, how wonderful would it be if his youngest daughter could carry the torch? But.

But I am not a business person. I just don't have the head to run a small business. I'm not passionate about t-shirts. I'm not passionate about sales. These are facts about me. It's hard to admit things like this about myself, because I want to be good at everything. But I'm just not.

Unfortunately, this has manifested itself into my perception of myself on a grand scale. I'm not good at DM Graphics, and that's where I spend most of my time, so in my head, that's turned into "I'm not good at anything." Which is blatantly untrue. And I realized this today when I got into it with my dad and it dawned on me that he has some serious misconceptions about me and my capacity as a human being. I said this to him, and he didn't believe me at first. Prove it. So I said the following:

"You think I'm scattered, unfocused and unmotivated. And maybe I am, in this one arena of my life. And I get that that's all you're seeing. But there are plenty of other areas of my life in which I excel. I have my Buddhist practice, my improv, my theater company, playwriting workshop - and in all of these I'm a strong, capable person who gets things done and leads people."

Who knows if he got it. But you know what? I needed to hear it for myself. I need some faith in myself right now, and asserting myself out loud gave me a little boost that I'll carry with me for a bit. Not to be all touchy-feely and weird about it, but I think I might get in the habit of saying nice things about myself out loud every now and again. Maybe I'll say them to Bear. You should do it too. (Feel free to talk to Bear, he's a very good listener.)



(By the way, now I totally have George Michael's "Faith" stuck in my head. You're welcome.)