Stick Your Neck Out

National Blog Posting Month – May 2013 – Comfort

Prompt – How much do you push yourself to leave your comfort zone?

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Ahh. The ever-popular comfort zone. Whether or not I leave the comfort zone really depends upon how much I desire the possible outcome. In most cases for me, leaving the comfort zone means placing myself in a social situation that triggers my social anxiety. There are two things that I do on a regular basis that do this.

1) Studying swordplay. If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll note that I love studying swordplay. I love driving those two hours to Ithaca every other week to take a lesson. I enjoy hanging out the the SCA crowd twice a week for some heavy weapons practice (which isn’t exactly swordplay, but it’s close enough). What you don’t realize is that going to these things triggers such strong anxiety in me that every single time I go to a practice or a lesson I am terrified! But I go just the same, because I know that if I don’t I’ll regret it later.

2) Research. You know. Science. One cannot do science in a vacuum. You have to work with people. Coordinate with colleagues. Get permissions. I have waves of panic every time the field season rolls around and it’s time to plan things. That means I have to make phone calls. It’s just painful. It’s not once a week (or more), only once a year, but the stakes are much, much higher. And yet I do it, well, most of it, because I want to do the science. I want to learn, and I know I can’t unless I stick my neck out there.

It turns out that most of my concerns are unfounded. It’s anxiety. It doesn’t make sense. So I’m glad and thrust myself out there regularly and hope for the best. It’s paid off.

But it isn’t easy.

For 5-20-13