There are many things I don’t know and even more thing it seems that I have to remind myself of on a daily basis. The obvious things like: I am a worthy person, I deserve love , blah blah blah. These are the mini mottos that are easily disregarded in the rush of the every day. Everyday of working, writing, oh is it time to do the laundry, did I have a shower today? do I smell? no leave it till tomorrow, too busy today, continue type type type.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed, and the daily mottos lose their meaning and like so many of the little promises we make ourselves of the little things we are ‘definitely’ going to do, get lost, left behind, burnt on the back-burner.
Like many graduates, I feared getting left behind, struggled through application forms, searching, stressing. And what for, I got left behind anyway, I did not secure that graduate training scheme, apply to do a masters or Land that PhD scholarship. But that mean I failed, one of the 5% or so percent that didn’t make it into the job market or postgraduate study.
A part of me is quite pleased to subvert these types of statistics that University Marking Teams love throwing out so willy nilly to secure the next cohort of undergraduates to be the ‘bums on seats’ for next september; that is until the Drop Out Rate hits by January as the realisation hits students that University isn’t the learning utopia that was sold to them at Open Day, it is a Copy, Paste regurgitation machine aimed to form the young mind into a reductive cog.
And in this way I can’t complain, University prepared me very well as employee of the future, a copy, paste machine.
Problem was I was never going to be that cog, was I. It isn’t recognising my failings or inadequacies. Even though in the past 6 months I have wondered if I was completely Unemployable, when facing; what seemed to me, so much rejection. But owning my own uniqueness.
See I was never an easy statistic; I was born from dysfunction and turmoil, survived most abuses and embarrassments, scrapped through lower to inadequate education, who’s base aim was to educate enough to get a job at McDonald’s (even then didn’t get accepted), turmoiled with my mental health (as much of this Blog is a witness to), nearly became a University Drop-up myself – to return and Graduate 2nd in my class with a 1st class honors and some fancy prizes (see my LinkedIn if super interested).
So what did I learn, was there some sort of epiphany moment that turned me from social failure to academic success, or was my University success a momentary blip in a life meant for failure?
Obviously it is neither; like every other human ever born, to be born and long dead there is no right or wrong way to live; even the most mainstream life is cluttered with quirks and stumbles along the way. But we don’t see the failures of others do we; we only see the failures of others in our own painful memories and transference of our feelings of inadequacy and shame of lack of perfection.
i.e. I am angry with my mum cause I worry I either am or will repeat her mistakes and be a ‘bad mum’ myself.
A closer truth is that every child is worried about making the same mistakes their parents did, often we carefully side step repeating history, but in the journey of parenthood make our own mistakes, often clouded by the process of desperately trying to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Living in the past vs Living in the Present, is a topic for the more mindful.
So what did I learn? I learnt that instead of tiring to be a square peg for a square hole, I perhaps need to appreciate that I am a little less square like that what I would like to be. In fact I might be a little bit more star-shaped, or circle shaped, or octagon; it is taking me a little bit of time to find out, again longer than what I would ideally like. But maybe that is ok.
My journey is my own, connected to the people I love and love me; it is a great honor and privilege, as my life gets longer I am reminded that it could have been shorter, I am reminded of the people I have lost, and the people I love that are yet to find their way.
I for one am enjoying remapping my unique journey; it is surprising and scary, but also exciting and rewarding.
I have also been contemplating editing the blog posts in this blog (as painful as it is to read some of this stuff back to myself); grammar and spelling has been neglected somewhat in my fury to expel truth from my minds moment; a task that non-square peggers struggle often with.
If the site goes down for a few days it’s cause I am editing /remapping, so no worries it will be live again soon. Along with a few other sites I am working on at the moment.
bluntrhetoric 
Reblogged this on Bloggulent Grey Tripe.