Thinking Sideways and Around the Bend

Okay, now that I’ve got the Team Call for 30DC out there (this blog, a forum post on 30DC, twitter & facebook & tumbled status updates via Ping), I have something to say about all of this from a personal perspective.

Yesterday I read the first week’s worth of the How to Think Sideways course (now full for the next six months). In it, Holly Lisle talks about several ways of thinking which do us in, as creatives. Not to give anything away, she also has several personal stories shared with us, which make you pick yourself up and look at your own life, and thinking. The big lesson was one towards Opportunities, and those that come from problems and shut doors.

Here I was (at the time, and still today) juggling all kinds of thoughts around myself. Not only am I knee-deep in the adoption process, and awaiting a September review panel meeting, but I had a hospital appointment today for a procedure I knew with a surety was going to hurt like heck, and leave me feeling a VICTIM again, but I also had accepted a blase conversation from an acquaintance who put me on the trail of a potential (read - airy fairy) part-time job via remote access doing the job I’ve been trained for over the past twenty years - ie. using my skills and experience, and earning some much needed money. The interview for that was this afternoon.

Yesterday, as I read HTTS and also listened into a UK Video Conference for the 30 Day Challengers, and all of this was swimming around my head. If I went to the interview and this pie in the sky thing actually came true, then what of my other part-time position with the local Kids Club? And what of my spare time now used for both HTTS and 30DC this coming month? And what of the adoption of a younger child? But goodness knows, I wanted to recover that sense of achieving and using the skills I have long developed. I wanted so much to return to that major part of my own identity, but I didn’t want to give up what I had built and pursued now in my life.

Going to that 30DC video chat was an eye-opener. Ed Dale and co tell us 30DCs to define and find a niche for our internet business. I kind of have that, but once I stepped into that chat last night, all I could think was - here I am again, a complete newbie and moving into a little world which is not that welcoming, and quite frankly - a little cliquey. There were people on that chat last night  who have done the 30DC for quite a few years. Ed and others recognised them, chatted with them, spoke about and hinted around stuff which happened in the past which I had no idea about. When I did get up the guts to type in a couple of sentences and hit the send button, no one noticed.

Same ol same ol, huh? We’ve all been there, on new forums, even going into something like a community meeting, a new school, even a weight watchers meeting (I’m not suggesting you’re fat, so don’t even go there…) and felt a little, well, unsubstantial. Not exactly welcomed until we have “done our time” and made our presence known by some convulated count of how many times you’ve spoken, or attended something, and an ability to bring up past historical information. It’s how friendships - even virtually - are formed. You’ve got to do the time.

So, as I watched that chat, and doubted my own ability to even participate in it, all I could think of for a niche was - is there some kind of product / website / domain which would resolve the problem of the newbie at such places. Can I set up a guarenteed buddy system and welcome wagon for such people?

Somewhat morosely, I went away and doubted myself. I’d cancelled out of the hospital procedure - put it off for another couple of months so that I can clear my head and seek out more information. But I still had the job interview for a pie-in-the-sky position to get through today, and I was nervous as hell (no heck about it).

This morning, I logged on quickly - seriously thinking that I would email myself out of the job interview, after some hefty discussions with my husband. We’d discussed things like opportunities - and the all the other aspects of our lives. And as I kept falling back on, this job interview seemed too much of an opportunity to pass over, but boy did it stress me out, because of all that I would need to give up. Opportunities, see? Holly Lisle had me thinking towards them.

Instead, this morning, Swampangel had emailed me about my need for a 30DC team. And suddenly the world had sent me another of thos opportunities - or messages. And I got excited again, excited to hear from an old scrapping friend, and excited to be involved with someone I knew would understand me, and my take on this whole 30DC thing. She was indeed an angel.

With that fortitude I went to that job interview, still nervous, still sick to the stomach, and found it to be everything I suspected it might be. It’s exciting, but unorganised, it’s nothing but potentially much. It’s a job or position which I could add much of value to, but only if the particular company comes to that same understanding. I’m not sure if I was dismissed out of it, or there remains a chance to work together in some compatibility. But with one door possibly closed, another opened in my own thinking.

I said to my hubbie this morning, amidst some nervous tears of the changes all this was bringing, that if returning to software testing was not for me, then this would be a message that I must take my time here in this house much more seriously. Yes, a few months ago I set myself a target to write a novel - and I did it (big time) but since then I’ve procrastinated in redrafting it, and I suffer from that most normal of fears - I am safer not stepping forward, I’ll never get published, I’ll make a fool of myself, the writing is krap….blah, blah, blah.

And then there’s this other mission statement / goal of mine this year - to make something of a minor web business - and here I was joining up on 30DC to learn all I could from that (even if I do have to suffer through something on google analytics and SEO). Can I put my copious organisation ability and testing capabilities to myself, then?

Perhaps this opportunity, no matter how rough and painful, is the right direction. And maybe I will return to testing at the same time. I think that HTTS and 30DC came at the right time for me. And now I just need to go and work on my Summer Scraps album layouts again, and chill down into the summer evening.