Not the Beginning. . . But the Beginning Part 2
Back to this new school year. . . I went in with a super positive attitude. I had colored my hair purple (only took me 20 years), embracing my YOLO attitude. You don't lose like that and go through so many life/death situations without adopting a somewhat... "you only live once" attitude. Carpe Diem! Live in the moment! I was a new person. I wanted to embrace the new me.
This new me also included, as with everything in my life, not letting ANYTHING hold me back. I've never let anything hold me back from doing things I want to do. I have a weight problem, but I don't let that stop me from participating in sports or runs or any of that. I want to be a part of things and I never crutch on the disadvantages that life throws at me. I wasn't going to let my, now, diagnosed, social anxiety rule me this year. I was going to rise up and tackle it and start to reach out to people at my work outside of my immediate grade level.
There were several new faces this year on our staff. We had a mass exodus over the summer, so with new blood comes new opportunities to make a new name for yourself. All of the bad had filtered too much into my life, as well as just bad situations and bad.... other things... so I was excited to finally embrace this new me.
I made a list of all the people I didn't know. I made a list of people I wanted to strengthen relationships with. I had some pretty powerful moments over the summer at professional development, such as outting myself as having social anxiety and that it was worse with my coworkers. It's all that fear of judgement and that no matter what I do it will always be wrong. Some of it is in my head, but others are situational. It's hard to break after years of that intentional/unintentional gaslighting in my life.
Pushing that aside, I knew I had some priority people first. These included the new staff. The best way for me to get to know people is to actually observe them. I hate the creepy term "watcher," but I like to observe. What are things they like? What do they talk to people about? Who do they hang around with? Those kinds of things. I'm essentially looking for a conversational in. Some would be shocked by what I know and remember about people, always filing away things to talk about in case I find myself in a conversation with them. I know... gosh... I sound so horrible, but my anxiety is crushing at times, especially at work (where I spend the bulk of my time). That fear of being judged was instilled in me young and has done nothing but grown until, well... it has completely engulfed me.
A problem, though, with the observing thing, is that I can become so desperate for interaction, that I swing in the other direction and, instead of being quiet, I get a bit loud and overly silly. I needed to find a way to balance the planning with the action. Additionally, I needed to let go of the fear of judgement and embrace being myself (at least... what I thought was myself).
Where all this started was with a co-worker that I wanted to interact with in a positive way, because they seemed like a really great person and I knew nothing about them. I'd seen them around at school functions and I even had run a room with them for an event a few years back. I remember they said they had a game like Headbanz back in college, maybe? From all that limited knowledge grew my mission on changing my perspective. This one simple decision to try to interact with a coworker would end up with me developing a different outlook on myself that affected my social interactions, my diet, and my physical fitness. This blog will, hopefully, chronicle my journey of inspiration based off of one simple, bright and beautiful smile.
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