Is that all it was?

Allow me just a few seconds of whining: now I can finally tell, and it just seems so... anticlimactic.

A few weeks ago I was bursting at the seams with news that felt like it was changing my life and rearranging all my paradigms. News that seemed all the more discombobulating and befuddling because it wasn't yet public knowledge, meaning I would have to do that most dreaded of dreadful deeds: keep something to myself. Don't get me wrong, I can keep other people's confidences with a locked tongue, but news about myself which requires lots of outside input and opinion? In my world, that stuff needs to get some serious feedback. I can't process these things alone! This "keeping silent" thing, it's mental constipation for me.

So, all of these weeks, I have been yearning to describe to you in minute detail all of my fears and apprehensions. I'd have given anything for a good, soul-cleansing, bare-all blog entry about my insecurities and my AWOL self-confidence, and - I won't deny it - I was coveting the encouragement I just know you would have offered me, being the amazing blogging community that you are. But it just wasn't to be.

And so I was forced to whittle down my confidant circle to the barest of minimums (and lean heavily on those brave souls), bottle myself up in other company, and try to go about my life as if all were the epitome of spiffiness when all I could think about was this One Big Thing that could change everything.

But that was then. And now, when the word is finally ripe to go out on the street, the situation has progressed to the point of banality, as these things tend to do. I look back at all the internal tumult and laugh in that knowing way of people who have grown weeks in maturity since the episode in question. Because now I know that I pretty much can, where before the voices had been chanting you can't - you can't - you can't. And I know it'll turn out fine, as opposed to my former opinion, which went something like: you're going to mess up and make enormous fricking mistakes and melt into a simpering pool of shame!

So the original source of all the angst hardly even bears mentioning anymore, 'cause it's rendered itself mundane, but since the act of mentioning has been such a huge deal to me, I will. At this small place where I work, there are two directors, the secretary, and me, heretofore the project assistant. The two directors are moving on to greener pastures (same umbrella organization, larger territory, cooler business trips) and the daily decision-making and program-administrating tasks of the organization will fall to yours truly. I guess it's a promotion, complete with new office, new title, new business cards and new salary. And up 'til a couple weeks ago it was scaring me shitless.

But then it started to sink in that they are really trusting me with something huge here. Even if I didn't think so yet, they were sure I could handle it, and handle it well. And when I started having to do it every day, I found out maybe they're right. It's not so bad. I know how to do all the required stuff; it's just that I have to think about it in a new way now - I have to keep all those balls in the air myself, and figure out what the next step is, and drum up the motivation to do it, all on my own.

And I will, I guess, because I have to, and that's when you test your mettle. I haven't melted into a simpering pool of shame yet, and I don't plan to, thank you very much.

That is all.