Intimidation

I hate finding out things you were not supposed to know. Employers keep certain things confidential for a reason, and people with no business saying anything should just keep their mouths shut, in my opinion. I was in a meeting at the beginning of the week with the education director at work, talking about some of her programs and picking up a grant proposal I wrote for her. I was talking about a concern I had in terms of a budget and mentioned wanting to be able to talk to other grant writers who had more experience, and she brings up this woman from Grayling, gushes about how successful she is, and told be she was actually the other candidate for my job. She said my boss’s biggest concern was that she lived in Grayling and was not planning to move…but she also told me that this other woman was actually her choice for the position.

OK, why, really, would you say something like that? It didn’t really get to me too much at the time…in fact, I thought the fact that they hired me, with no experience, over this woman with tons of experience was pretty incredulous. Now I have this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and I’ve spent a lot of today trying not to cry when I think of how daunting the task ahead of me is. I’m not just writing grants…that would be too easy. I am trying to start up a whole grant writing campaign with no knowledge of how to do it, logistically speaking. I don’t know anything about the organization, what their priorities are, etc. etc. They hired me for my writing skills and my passion, according to what my boss and the CEO said. Well, I am thinking that they made a mistake. I’m not so sure the ability to put words on a page in a coherent fashion and a strong desire to tritely “make a difference” is enough to be successful in this job!

So I’m basically afraid they screwed up when they hired me and that they are going to regret it. I’m also afraid that I made the wrong decision, taking this job. The job in TC was so perfect…everything except the location, because of Mitch’s job. How large of an issue would that really be? He’s commuting from Traverse every day and we still have time to spend together in the evenings. We go biking, make dinner, relax, and all that stuff even though he has a long drive. What did I do?

I really felt, except for only a few days, that I followed God and took this job because it was where he was leading me. Now I’m not so sure if I really listened to him as well as I thought I did. I try to put my life in his control, I say I put my life in his control, but how do I know if I’m really doing that or not? How do I know when it’s my stubborn, fallible human mind that is telling me to do something and when it’s God? Yes, it seems pretty amazing that Mitch and I both got jobs that are technically in Cadillac (his training in TC won’t last forever!) and that I managed to get hired over someone with stellar experience. So this is God’s will, isn’t it? He does throw challenges into our lives and this is surely a challenge, and he wouldn’t want me to walk away from it, would he? It’s just that, in the back of my mind, I keep wondering if I made the wrong decision.

I think it’s just the intimidation factor at work here: I’m intimidated by this unknown person who was technically more qualified for this job than me, but I got it anyway. I’m intimidated by the sheer size of the task ahead of me and by the fact that my boss is tremendously busy with all this other stuff and I feel like I am bothering him when I have questions…through no fault of his own, I must add in fairness. It’s just silly, stupid me. Look at me, getting all choked up again. I need to go home, curl up on the couch with my cat, and cry while I wait for Mitch to get home and assure me that this is all part of the plan.