One Foot in front of the Other

I was clothing shopping, a week before I was moving across the country for a new job, and two weeks before my co-shopper was moving across to the country to start college. I made some offhand comment about how I envied her calm in the face of all the CHANGE. She turned to me and said, "I'm one big white knuckle."

She pointed out the things I've done that she admired as much as I'd been admiring her presence of mind in the face of launching into college. Other jobs and internships, moving to places unknown, foreign countries even. Oh yeah, I thought. I remembered too that though all of that had been great, how terrified I was at the start. How do you do it? she asked me. I had no good answer. I said, "You put one foot in front of the other, and again, and you keep going." Baby steps. I feel like that what I'm doing now. I want to push myself, to make new friends, figure out my new neighbor become an instant whiz at my job (and all while loving it and having some energy, thank you very much); and that all scares me a bit, but somehow doing it all step by step means I don't let the fear stop me.

Thinking about this I recall another piece of 'growing up' advice once given to me. It was on the subject of phone interviews. There are some obvious things one should not do. Be eating or drinking, flush the toilet and so on. What is good for you to, according to people whose job it is to improve business efficiency and that sort of thing (aka a Reliable Source): is walk around. Stand up and move about while you're doing the interview. Now I wouldn't carry this so far as to include walking a labyrinth at the time, or tapping out dance steps. But I found on trying it, that it reduced my fidgets; I was holding the phone with one hand and the other was gesturing as I might have done in face to face conversation, instead of nervously wandering around the desk or my hair. Well, it worked for me (I got the job I was perambulating about during the interview for), so I thought I'd pass it on.

One step at a time.