I just had a meeting with my outgoing Real Food Calculator campaign leader and mentor Jesse, and she said she was worried about my capabilities as the Vice Chair of the Food Systems Working Group. My motto this year was to just jump in, and that's what I did. It was overwhelming and intimidating, but I got up courage and took risks. But even if people are strong swimmers, if the currents are too strong, they still drown.
Sometimes I need to know when to step back. It's difficult to know my limits though. Steve, one of my professors, recently said to me to deny more projects to take on so I don't spread myself to thin. "You get really good at doing a shitty job at a lot of things, instead of doing a really good job at a few things." He was gesturing to my new internship at Permaculture Magazine North America. Oddly enough, my other motto was "You can do anything, but not everything." That's why I stopped writing in this blog.
This year I found myself a small entity in a vast, cold empty void. I had a lot of things to do but didn't know where to start. I ended up soothing my poor overwhelmed brain with free days of knitting in my dorm and listening to Lana Del Rey and Marina and the Diamonds.
I became hopeless. I wasn't passionate anymore, I didn't know what was going on. Health problems layered on top of school and work. I became depressed for no reason. I have everything I've always wanted but I am not phased by any of it. The world suddenly looked meaningless to me.
The difference is, I love my internship job. So much better than the FSWG job. We don't do anything in FSWG - we just talk about everything - and work in the magazine industry is so fast-paced and we get things done. I have specific tasks that I know the purpose of.
My other professor, Sarah, scared me shitless the other day when I was asking her questions about my ILC project: "No, you can't do this. You're not ready for that." She was basically yelling at me. In the real world, you need to grow a thick skin. I was aware of this. I am working on it.