December 7th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
After days of mulling it over, I hit reply on an old friend’s email that landed in my inbox a couple weeks back. Summarizing several years into a few sentences isn’t my specialty–actually, summarizing anything into a few sentences isn’t my specialty. But, I stumbled upon some unexpected insight when, without thinking, I wrote this:
I guess add it together and divide by two and I’m somewhere in the middle of mundane and chaotic.
After some clarification, I began to write, “Otherwise I just pretend I know what I’m doing.” But I ended up erasing that line because I’m pretty sure that’s how I used to roll. These days, I’m entirely positive that everyone around me has a pretty accurate perception of that in which I’m capable and competent, and that in which I am neither capable, nor competent.
I quit pretending about four years ago, and upon writing this email, I was entirely relieved to find that to be true.
Make no mistake: my eyes are still bigger than my stomach. But thankfully I’m surrounded by people who believe in me and who believe in being ridiculous and having disproportionate eyes and stomachs, so I can enjoy the freedom of smiling about it because at least it’s not a secret.
