I listen to public radio. Like, a LOT. Yesterday as I was running errands for my mother in law, I caught part of an episode of On Point. The guest was Reshma Saujani, the woman who started Girls Who Code - a program that encourages girls to explore technology with the hopes of bridging the gender gap in the industry. But she wasn't talking about coding... She was talking about sociology.
Her argument is that we as a society foster risk taking in boys while we teach girls to be perfect. Doesn't sound so sinister. And yet, she pointed out the damage this does. Women do not want to fail. I don't think anyone LOVES failure, but women really really don't. We would rather quit entirely than fail at something. And when we do, we experience massive backlash, both from our own internal monologue AND from the world around us. We think that if we are not naturally amazing at something, it is not worth doing. Being "just ok" at something is not acceptable. We must either excel, or do something else. Listening to this show, I slowly began to realize that this had been the habit of my ENTIRE LIFE, including the conversation I had had with my husband that morning.
You see, I like being the best. I get a lot of pleasure out of having the best brownies or the cutest outfit or making the prettiest things. But its not just pleasure. I also NEED that positive reinforcement to feel I am doing well. But its not just feeling like I am doing well. I CRAVE that positive reinforcement to tell myself I am a worthwhile person. So failure? Well that basically tells me I AM a failure. Not that I did something wrong, but that something is wrong with ME as a PERSON. That my value as a human on this earth is somehow lessened. It sounds preposterous when I type it out, but as I sit here writing, I can list you out dozens of times I have been paralyzed for fear of failure. Here's a particularly good one. I did not write the final English paper in my Junior year of high school. It was worth more than half my grade. I did that a lot in school, you see. If I didn't know exactly how to begin and how to make it THE BEST PAPER EVER, I simply wouldn't start. I failed a lot of classes that way, but I didn't fail the assignment... I simply got no points because I couldn't bear to be scrutinized and be found lacking. If I never tried, I couldn't fail. Repeat that about a hundred times and you have my high school career. And Jr. Hi. And basically everything after 2nd grade. Yikes.
So that leads me to today. I missed a big chunk of the show, so I listened to it this morning via podcast. My world opened. Her closing words were some advice on how to be brave. The first was to practice being imperfect. The last one was something like "just do it" so I decided to Nike myself. I have wanted to write a blog for so long. But I worried about things like, "what if no one reads it" and "what if people disagree with me and argue in the comments and its upsetting" or "what if what I write isn't correct" or "what if I never get any followers" or "what if it doesn't have a unifying theme and all my posts seem haphazard" or "what if I don't look professional..." I constantly cut myself down over real or imagined threats to my perfection and therefore my self worth. So here I am, publishing a post I have NOT rewritten 100 times. Or even twice (Edited to add: yeah ok, I couldn't do it... I ended up at least proofreading and changing some wording...). Although I did google the definition of sociology just to make sure I was using it right. And of course I looked up Reshma's name so I could spell it correctly. Twice. But I am putting myself out there. Raw and unfiltered. Bravely. Because with all the time I would spend agonizing over this post and rewriting it forever and then NEVER ACTUALLY PUBLISHING IT, I could be doing what I really want to do... Going back to school for fashion design. Yep, that's the conversation I had with my husband this morning. I am tired of being too afraid to live my life. Here is to many more brave, imperfect moments. Let's do this together, women!
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