Fifteen years ago, in my last semester of college, I was planning to set up my own desktop support business while supporting myself as a substitute teacher. I took and passed the California Basic Educational Skills Test, making me eligible to work as a substitute teacher. Then, in late May, just after I thought I had graduated, I found out that I'd made a mistake and I hadn't quite graduated, and to get my bachelor's I'd have to take another class. I took a six-week summer school class that met 4-6pm on weekdays. I started running out of money. I couldn't find temp work that would be fine with me leaving at 3:30pm to make it to class, and I didn't want to ask my parents or Leonard for more money. I started looking for jobs. I felt restless and embarrassed. In early July, I finished the summer school class, and on July 15th, I accepted a customer service job at a bookstore. I stayed there for about a year and then went to work for Salon.com, and I never got back to the teaching and desktop support plans.

Why?

Monday and yesterday, I was riding back home from WisCon with my friend Julia, and I was telling her this, and I was looking back and asking: why? Once I finished the summer school class, why didn't I go back to the plan that I had cared so much about and crafted with such ambition? Right now I'm fairly happy with where I am, but why did I give up on the thing I'd wanted to do?

I look back and I see that my mental health is better now than it was then, and I see that my parents -- though I think they wanted to be supportive -- didn't nudge and remind me, "hey, you can get back to your old plan now" -- Mom wanted me to find a way to regular employment, particularly with a government. And I so wanted to be independent of my parents and my boyfriend that a regular paycheck was so enticing -- and I didn't even consider using unemployment assistance or a credit card to give me more financial leeway. But more than all that, I just wasn't good at the skill of resilience when it came to big life plans and projects. I didn't feel like I was particularly in control of my own life, I think, and so when a big unexpected obstacle popped up, I just defaulted back to taking the opportunities that were in front of me instead of working to make my own.

This morning, catching up on friends' blogs, I see Mary Anne Mohanraj (whom I met eight years ago at WisCon):

...she thought the main difference between me and a lot of other people, is that when I want something, I tend to just try to do it, whereas she, and lots of other folks, would waste a lot of time dithering.

I think that's probably accurate. And I could try to unpack why that is, why I don't tend to hesitate, though I'm not sure I know. Some of it is base personality, some of it, I suspect, is cultural and class background -- being raised in a comfortable economic situation with parents who trained me to work hard, but also expected that I would succeed at whatever I put my hand to.

That gives me a baseline confidence that makes it relatively easy for me to try things, and even when I fail (I flunked calculus, I failed my driving test the first time, I have messed up far more sewing projects than I've succeeded at, I have plants die all the time because I forget to water them, etc. and so on), it mostly doesn't get to me. I can shake it off and either try again, or just move on to something else.

All this reflection is bouncing around in my head, jarring loose thoughts on adaptability, confidence, entrepreneurship, Ramsey Nasser on failure, saying no, danah boyd on the culture of fear in parenting, Jessica McKellar on why she teaches people to program, the big and increasing emphasis Recurse Center puts on self-direction in learning, etc. Love and strength and fear. You know, the little stuff. ;-) Onwards.