Impostor Syndrome

– is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be. (source: wikipedia)

I was debating whether or not to take on a new mechanical design project recently. I was hemming and hawing over how I didn’t know whether or not I could do it, whether I was even capable of doing it. My husband kept trying to reassure me that I would be fine and finally suggested I look up impostor syndrome as a way to describe how I was feeling. When I read the wikipedia article it hit the nail on the head as to how I felt.

I had actually worked on several other projects before with the same people but as each new one came up I would always feel my stress and anxiety go way up and my feeling of competence go way down. This time was no different except I was able to put a definition to it and it was eye opening to me that this was a common feeling to many people.

More than just feeling incapable is this fear of failing that paralyzes me even before I start. For some reason failure seems to be the biggest hindrance to starting a new project. What if I screw up? If I fail, what will they think of me? If I fail, what will I think of myself? I struggle with not letting success or failure of a project define who I am.

I think when I look back on a project I enjoyed the challenge and developing my skills. I also enjoy (just as much if not more) the mundane projects that don’t require much thought but when finished feels like I accomplished something because it’s checked off of my list of things to do. I am extremely risk averse and hate being out of my comfort zone. At the same time I am feeling like I need to stretch myself a bit and try to be okay with it if I fail or can’t complete something I set out to accomplish. Currently, I can’t even figure out these old physics equations that look so familiar yet are so completely lost on me. And so I read wikipedia and scour the interweb for tutorials to try to make sense of it… but man, am I ever stressed.

Accomplishment

In the last week a work opportunity just fell into my lap and if all works out well I might be able to start doing some mechanical drawings for a friend’s company. It would be a few hours a week, I can work from home, and the projects would be non time critical. At this season in my life it’s a great job.
I haven’t touched any CAD software in 7 years now so my husband suggested that I try and play around with Google Sketchup to try and get back into the groove of solid modelling. He actually had a project I could do for his company on Sketchup and asked if I wanted to try it out. I enthusiastically said yes.
I thought it would be pretty easy for me to pick up when I started but it was not. After the first night of playing around with Sketchup and trying to make a solid model off a picture I ended up frustrated and in a bad mood. M was super nice about it and said if I didn’t want to finish his project it would be okay. I thought I would’ve enjoyed the challenge of learning a new software and we were both surprised at how discouraged I was and how much I just wanted to give up. Sketchup is actually not like the other 3D CAD programs I have used in the past and I think that really took me by surprise as well.
M had wanted me to finish the model in one night so I was ready to call it quits when I didn’t get very far the first night. But the next morning when I woke up I was determined to finish his model just for my own sake, even if he couldn’t use it at all. Let me just say, the next couple of days were even more frustrating and I was cursing up a storm as I spent hours working on it. But by the last day as I was finishing it up I found myself starting to get the hang of it. And to be honest, it was kind of nice being somewhat productive at night and not just being a complete sloth after the kids went to bed. (I tried to work on it during the day when I thought the kids were preoccupied but that was a complete fail. As soon as I opened my laptop the kids would swarm like a moth to a flame. They would gather around me and ask a million and one questions. “What are you watching mommy? What are doing with daddy’s picture? Are you doing daddy’s work?”)
I was supposed to have finished the model on Wednesday night but I was a little late in delivering it and finally finished it Saturday night. And even better he was able to use my model for his project still! So the model is not perfect by any means and probably isn’t anything super awesome looking but it felt great to learn a new tool and to finish my first ever solid model on Sketchup. It really has been a long time since I’ve challenged myself like this and the feeling of accomplishment of teaching myself Sketchup and completing a project has been pretty nice.

                    

Fears

So I think I want to volunteer for a shelter that assists people dealing with domestic violence and sexual assault. Before doing so I need to fill out an application, undergo 65 hours of training and have an interview.
Part of me is very excited about this because I have been wanting to do something outside of the home for a little while now and I think this would give me a better sense of whether I would really like to pursue counseling and if this is really something that I am passionate about. But there is another more insecure part of me that is very fearful about even taking this step of volunteering. I know it sounds silly considering it’s only volunteer work but it’s been a very long time since I have done anything with structure and challenge outside of raising my kids. Because they are taking the time to train me they ask for a one year commitment and 100 volunteer hours. One of my fears is that this turns out not being something I’m very good at all or that I’m not very passionate about but still have the one year commitment to fulfill. Or what if it is just way more draining on me than I expected and end up not being able to separate the burdens I feel for others and bring it all home with me to my family?
But if I do really enjoy it, another more practical side of me cannot justify paying all that money on tuition to go back school again for a degree in counseling. I wonder if I would be okay with volunteering instead but never making a career out of it even if my husband is totally okay with it and can continue to support our family. I also have other thoughts swirling in my head about how this will change our family and our schedules (because I’m very big on routines).
And there are some days where I’m just not feeling very confident in myself. In these moments I think God is teaching me to take confidence in Him and what He can do in me and to have a little faith to take that bold step because He is there.

Mom’s Influence

We are doing premarital counseling with an engaged couple and I am reminded how much we are shaped and influenced by the way we were raised by our parents. As I am thinking more about what I want to do as the kids get older I realize how much my thinking is influenced by the way my mom raised me and how much I want to emulate what she did.

My mom was a stay at home mom to me and my brother up until my later elementary school years. I think she studied botany in college but when she did go back to work after I was in school she became a realtor. It was a part-time job with flexible hours and she was great at it. But I still remember her being home most of the time when I was home from school. And if she wasn’t then my brother was old enough to watch me. Her priority was still to be at home when we were out of school and to take care of us.

And now that I am a parent and have kids of my own I find myself wanting the same thing. I want to also pursue something that has flexible hours because I think I would still really like to be at home and with my kids when they are home from school most of the time. While I would still feel the need/want to do something for myself, my main priority would still be to be at home when my kids come home. It is familiar to me because that’s the way it was done when I was growing up and it worked for my family growing up. And so I want to follow a similar path also.

Options

I’m starting to get excited as I begin to think and do more research on some of the things I would like to pursue after my kids are all in school.  I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering but most of the things that I think about doing now have nothing to do with that.  Lots of people ask me if I want to go back to it and to them I emphatically say no. I just did not enjoy work as a ME very much.  Besides, I haven’t kept up with it at all and so it would be very hard to catch up with all the new technology and brush up on my ME skills (whatever that may be, I’m not even sure).  There are some more practical friends that feel it is kind of waste to go away from what I spent my 4 years in college and post college doing. But for me I am happy to get away from it and start fresh. And to some extent, my college years and work has taught me that I am capable of learning a new skill with some hard work and effort.

There is of course my endless thought of learning how to play guitar and hopefully someday I’ll be able to strum some praise songs that the family could sing together.    

Another option I thought of is learning Quickbooks and helping out M’s company with their accounting and payroll because that could be a way of me helping out and getting involved a little more if I wanted to.

Then I also still think about pursuing Christian counseling.  Or maybe taking some lay counseling classes and use that maybe in a church.

And when I think about it some more there is one aspect that I really did enjoy about ME and that was doing CAD design/drawings.  I really enjoyed figuring out the different softwares to create 3D models and if I could get some freelance projects to help create CAD drawings from home I think I would really enjoy that.  

As I think about all these options it occurs to me that I am turning into a dreamer (which I usually am not at all and it’s exciting) but I am not a do-er (which is not so good). I’ve had my guitar for 3-4 years and I still can only play the same 3 chords and one strumming pattern that I learned back in college from my brother. I’ve thought about learning Quickbooks about 6 months ago, played around with it a little and flipped through a tutorial and never looked at it again. Since then, M’s company has hired an accountant to do everything for them. Someone recently just asked me if I could whip up a CAD drawing for her new store in a weekend and I politely said no because I don’t even have a computer or any of the CAD software at home. M suggested Google Sketchup and I said, nah, I don’t want to learn it that weekend.

Maybe I need to set some goals for myself or have some external motivation to get myself moving, like paying for some classes. In the meantime, this daydreaming has been fun as I make a bazillion bucks in my head off of my part-time CAD drawings and part-time counseling work…

Transitions

As the kids are getting older I’m feeling more and more like I would like to find something to do for myself. Even though only one of them is in school every day and it will probably be another year before the youngest is in preschool I want to do more than just have my life revolve around staying at home with the kids and being the supportive wife. I used to think that I would be happy just being a stay at home mom forever and spending my free time being the PTA mom and volunteering at my kids schools. To be painfully honest I’m feeling burnt out being a stay at home mom. During the days I will still be with the kids and doing things with them but I feel like at night I should be more productive and meaningful with my time, whether it be pursuing a new hobby or thinking about a new career path and planning for it or something.

I’m not a very disciplined person or super ambitious in terms of career so I keep thinking maybe I will start off with something as simple as learning to play guitar. Finding something to do that could eventually lead to making some money would be even better! I’ve been looking at my spiritual gifts and wondering how I could be exercising those more to benefit others and myself at the same time. I’ve been thinking about wanting to do something for myself for a while… it’s time that I start acting on it now.

Separation of work and home

I have had this dream of wanting to be a Christian counselor someday. But there have always been hesitations and reasons for not pursuing this. For instance, one of them would be that I would have to go back to school again and get some kind of degree but I really don’t want to go back to school again. And a lot of these other reasons are probably more excuses rather than actual deterrents for me not pursuing this career.

But there is one thing that really makes me think twice about whether this is really something that I should/could pursue. M and I had discussed that one of my biggest problems would be having to separate my work from my home life. I worry that emotionally and mentally I would bring my work home with me and continue to be burdened by the people I counsel and their lives. That after my work day is over I still would not be able to completely let it go and be there wholly for my family.

I wasn’t very passionate about my past jobs. Heck, I didn’t even like most of them. So it was easy for me to leave my work at work and come home and just enjoy the rest of the day and the weekends not even thinking twice about my work. I don’t know if it is different when you do a job that you enjoy or even more, a job that you are passionate about.

I’ve seen how hard it is for M to fully separate himself from his work in the startup life. The work is neverending and so much is depending on getting things done and delivering for the company’s success and for my family’s livelihood. I can see how much he enjoys it but I can also see how much it is always on his mind even on the nights when he shuts down and goes offline. And I can sometimes see the ripple effects it has on our family. He works very hard in both his work and home life and he makes it work somehow. Maybe it is because of the passion he has for both.

I am not as big a risk taker as my husband and so for things like this that are challenging it excites him. For me, these challenges of a new career and balancing work and home just scare me. And so I just sit here and do nothing about it for now… but at least I blogged about it!