As they say, when you fall, dust yourself off and get back on the horse. The last two weeks I have been making a foray back into the training world, where I have literally been the third wheel in a three day event, but ended up doing far more than I had planned. It felt good, but also very uncomfortable, as I can feel myself struggling, especially since I wasn't able to hold my concentration for the entire time.
However, back on the horse, right?
Well, Horse adjacent perhaps.
But today, I ended up taking a meeting with a project team who are struggling with the training needs for a very large customer. After building a plan for them for the delivery, I have decided to take the training myself. While I really don't want to screw this up, it happens to be the kind of training that I can design to suit my abilities (or disabilities as the case might be), as I am able to limit it to a very strict session of basics only and reign in any scope creep. But, due to the customer, there is a fair bit of risk involved if I get in there and am unable to meet targets.
One of the issues I have is my ability to form the bigger picture, as literally, I have no imagination. This makes problem solving on the fly very difficult, which is an area that I used to excel at and has helped me build my career positions. It scares me to think what happens if I am unable to recover at least a large part of the function, as it means having to redesign the entirety of my life from the ground up, something that I don't think anyone willingly chooses to do.
But, we don't always have choices in what happens to us and perhaps, we rarely have, if ever if you subscribe to the concept of our lack of true freewill. However, while we might not have infrastructure freewill, I at least feel I have the choice of second-layer options, that I have agency to affect the outcomes in my life that I am aware of, even if I don't have total control.
While I am confident that I will do my best, I am far from confident that my best is going to be good enough in the field. These kinds of events I used to be able to almost walk into and deliver, but with my exploratory experiences since the stroke, I know better and will prepare as well as I can, which includes the preparation for utter failure.
My colleague offered to be available just in case, but I feel like if I have him there with me, I will use him as a crutch and call for his aid too early. While this would probably be safer for the customer, it would then drop my confidence down even further and make me more wary for any other sessions in the future. Yeah, I am more a "trial by fire" kind of a person when it comes to testing my abilities, since I am not that scared of failure.
What I am scared of is being in a position where I am only failing though, where I can no longer meet the simplest of needs in my daily word, which would then force me into finding something I can do. But, like I said to the neurologist who called me today, "how can average be good enough?" While I am average in so many ways, a lot of my life has been spent improving some areas to an above average state and not only that, they are areas that I love.
Quality of life is not just being able to feed myself or, not drooling in the corner, there is a hierarchy of needs and when we are satisfied in the lower rungs, we look to satisfy the higher needs. Food and shelter are taken care of for the moment, but the higher order needs aren't getting satisfied, unless I decide that the best I can do in life from now on is to be happy doing not much of importance at all. My jobs aren't going to change the world, but they do add value to people's experience and improve their lives a bit. While packing shelves at the supermarket is valuable too, it feels like quite a different rung on the value ladder when considering it from the perspective of my own loves.
But, this brings up more risk with this training upcoming session as it will be a tangible point on the timeline that will inform me of just where I stand and perhaps, how much hope there is for me to retain the things I love, or whether I should spend more time preparing for its loss.
I am a hodler at heart, but I am not sure if my head still agrees.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]