When I exchanged letters with an college friend this morning, I realized how self consciousness, in some ways, got in the way of our friendship many years ago. Why?
During college, in many ways, we did our own thing. We had some similar and different friends and participated in both similar and different events, yet overall our lives had many similarities with regard to our upbringings, interests, and values.
After college, we were both navigating paths different than our parents since we were both first generation college students--we didn't have a lot of support for that next step, and we each navigated our paths somewhat differently yet we both ended up in the field of education.
During those post-college years, I was quite self conscious about my choices--I wasn't sure about each step. I also didn't have much money so I was somewhat limited with what I could do beyond work and recreation nearby.
Way led on to way with both of our lives. We had a variety of jobs, family ups and downs, homes and children. Similarly, we both did all we could to give our children advantages--that was and still is important to us, and now we're both primarily devoted to family and have far more time than during those very busy working-child raising years.
When you're self conscious and unsure about your choices or what to do, that can get in the way of good friendships and support for others. Looking back, I wish I was a bit more confident during those post college, early parenting years. I can look back and think of ways that I could have gained greater confidence. Counseling or coaching would have been helpful. More support for working moms in the work place would have been helpful too, instead to be a working mom was still not embraced by many during my early years as a teacher and parent. In fact, one administrator criticized that in my evaluation--that would not be acceptable today. And, it would have been nice to have a bit more time--as I've written about before, I do believe that the expectations for elementary educators are unreasonable since so much of the work falls into your personal time because during the school day you're on task with students almost all day with little to no time for the needed research, paperwork, evaluations and analysis.
That self consciousness that everyone feels from time to time can be positive when it makes you think about who you are and where you are headed, but it can be debilitating if it lasts too long or is too deep. In those cases, it's a good idea to seek out good counseling and supports to help you live a positive life. Onward.