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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I have a lot of fears. More than I’d like to admit, really. One of the things I was most afraid of growing up was walking into a new situation. I hated visiting churches because I dreaded Sunday School in a strange church. What if I didn’t know where to go? What if no one talked to me? My parents weren’t of the easy, oh-you-can-just-stay-with-me variety and I had to go. Never once did I get lost, but neither did I ever stop being afraid until I hit twelve or thirteen. <\/p>\n
I hated talking to strangers. What if I didn’t know what to say? What if they didn’t talk? And true to form, my mom didn’t let me off the hook there either. We HAD to go talk to visitors at our church. When we said, “BUT MOM ….” she just smiled sweetly and said, “You can either go talk to her by yourself or I’ll go with you.” Trust me. That was plenty of motivation to move on my own. Not that my mom wasn’t nice. And not that having her along wouldn’t have made the conversation start easily. But the hey-my-mom-is-here-because-I’m-too-shy-to-talk connotation was beyond embarrassing. <\/p>\n
It happened everywhere. Even a brand new restaurant was enough to make me nervous. There’s probably a phobia name for people like me.<\/p>\n
Then I went to college. I’d never been to public school. Our eNORmous private school of ninety-six students, ninety percent of which attended the same church I did, did little to prepare me for the culture shock of being alone. I went to school and stayed in the same classroom. Suddenly I was navigating classrooms and class schedules and learning how to use a microscope in a lab with thirty other kids who knew what they were doing. Scared? You have no idea. For the first two weeks I ate my lunch in the car just for some space and safety. <\/p>\n
Then I met Holly and a few more friends. By then I’d aced the first few tests and discovering that my private school education actually did hold water and I wasn’t going to be light years behind gave me another shot of confidence. Before long I was hanging out in the cafeteria with friends as long as I could between classes and transferring to a different community college because the honors program was better and the clinicals practiced at a bigger hospital. Finally, new things weren’t quite so horrible. I felt twinges with every new semester as I once again found new classes, but it was better. Way better. <\/p>\n
Fast forward a few years down the road and I’d lost all the fear. I’d learned that getting lost is as easy as asking directions. That no one kicks you out when you make a mismove out of ignorance. And best of all, my instructors had drilled the “There is no such thing as a dumb question” concept into my head well enough to take care of the rest. <\/p>\n
Now, almost eight years into this journey of stay at home mom, I feel the woolies creeping back in. I find myself afraid to try. Afraid to risk. Afraid of new situations that take me out of my comfort zone. And I do not like it. Not one little bit.<\/p>\n
So last week when I got a phone call from a research group, I tentatively hung on. They asked a million and one questions about my history, work, education, and who I was associated with. Best I could tell, they were performing research on something either related to business or law and they would pay me $125 for six hours of my time. Compared to book royalties, that looks like a millionaire in the making. She kept asking questions and I kept hedging. “But do you realize that I am a stay at home mom and that I am not abreast of what is going on in this area? I mean, I don’t even have TV.” <\/p>\n
“Yes, I know, but we want a wide variety of people. You don’t have to know about this stuff. You just have to be able to express your opinion.” <\/p>\n
By the time we’d talked for thirty minutes I was convinced it was not a hoax. I was equally convinced that I was trying to get her to disqualify me so that I wouldn’t have to face my fears. I mean come on, she couldn’t even tell me what I was going to be stating my opinions about. <\/p>\n
I signed up. 1. Because I could really use $125. 2. Because I knew it was time to face my fears head on and make them go away.<\/p>\n
I was nervous. Really nervous. And I went back to pulling out all the old coping techniques. “You can’t do anything worse than mess up. It’s ok to say, ‘I don’t know.’ This is going to be good for you. Think about it being fun. Stop thinking about yourself.” <\/p>\n
Oddly enough, by the time I got to the {very nice} hotel, I was excited. I saw plenty of other people walking in with the print out in hand and I knew it was all going to be ok. Signed in. Remembered to smile. Sat down to fill out paperwork and suddenly realized this was not about market research at all. I was essentially becoming a juror in a medical malpractice lawsuit and my “opinion” was not only an opinion, it was going to change the course of the lawsuit. I thought perhaps the wording was wrong. But nope. Flipping through a few more pages I noticed juror # ___ on each page. Rats.<\/p>\n
I walked back out to where I’d signed in. “I’m so sorry, but I didn’t realize I was actually about to become a juror and I cannot morally incriminate someone. I was told on the phone this was about business. I did not in any way mean to lead you on in regards to my participation.” <\/p>\n
And just like that I hear a deep voice from three feet in front of me. “Yeah, they told me that, too, and I can’t act as a juror either.” I don’t know what you’d expect when you hear that, but I did not expect to see a twenty something male with long dark hair, darker sunglasses, and a bit of modern hippie in his demeanor. Just saying, he must have been as wide left on moral issues as I was wide right.<\/p>\n
They were incredibly kind. Gave us both $40 for showing up and told us they couldn’t tell us it was about a lawsuit because plenty of people would jump in just for that reason because they want revenge. I was bummed.<\/p>\n
At first I was bummed mostly because I really wanted that $125. AND the lunch cart was just rolling in. But as more of the afternoon rolled by, I realized that I was equally bummed by other losses. The thought of a medical ethics discussion has me absolutely salivating. I KNOW that moms are oh, so important. I know that in my head. My job and times with the boys is priceless. Blah blah blah. I really do believe it. And I wouldn’t trade it or else I’d be doing something else. This is voluntary. I just wish I could do two things at once. Because being there made me realize how much I miss being involved on an adult level and feeling as though you are actually a valuable, contributing member of society. <\/p>\n
But hey, it was fun getting dressed up. And I did face my fears and go so I still win. Now maybe I can work on one of the next ones on the list. Anyone want to go with me? (Who said I learned anything?) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have a lot of fears. More than I’d like to admit, really. One of the things I was most afraid of growing up was walking into a new situation.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39ynQ-8j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}