I’m an amateur & proud of it!

Thanks to Monica I realized that I suffered from an identity crisis.

I refer to the Monica who was afraid of being mentioned in my blog. She started it with talking about her internal button over a yummy dinner. She said she had a ‘looking good’ button she needed to turn off and then commented “I have to be careful, it might end up in Wilma’s blog”.
Ha, we caught her ‘looking good’ button red handed.

However she is right of course. Everything goes into my blog, John, the cat and she and her ‘button’ too.

So what has all this and Monica got to do with my identity crisis? Weeelllll . . .

Once I was a fully trained employed professional, a know-it-all and to my defense I was expected to behave like one.
I had the status of a professional, things became routine and easy and seldom was I questioned if I knew what I was doing.

So, after the talk with Monica I realized that I created an internal ‘I am a professional’ button.
In my former life as an employee I nervously pressed that one when I was in doubt so I could speak as an authority even if I didn’t feel like one. The button did its trick, people saw me as a professional.
In the end I believed it myself. I was pretty clued on and there wasn’t much I didn’t know!
That was when the button got stuck in the ‘on’ mode without me noticing it.

Now comes the part which is all John’s fault.
He took me out of my small and familiar ‘employee’ world and catapulted me into the new big wide world of business.
I didn’t know anything about business and yet was given many tasks.
I had to do the accounts with no training.
I had to do marketing, writing copy for websites before I even had a clue what a website was supposed to do; all without training.
I had to cater for events while not being a professional caterer.

I had to produce results without ‘officially knowing’ how to.
And producing I did; mostly mistakes.

So here I was with my internal button blaring “‘I am a professional” while making mistake upon mistake and feeling very uncomfortable with my low level of productivity.
I was out of my depth and losing my confidence because of that button permanently on ‘on’. That button being ‘on’ stopped me from feeling proud of my efforts and enjoying learning new things. It threw me in an identity crisis which prevented me from feeling relaxed, accepting the situation and enjoying this new adventure.

However now I know what unsettled me about my amateur status I can turn the button off permanently.
I don’t think I need that button anymore.

I am an amateur, dealing with a lot of new things, making lots of mistakes, learning all the way and proud of it.