It was the best day
Tackling professional conundrums or attempting to...
It was the best day,
Someone at the table asked me what I thought.
My views were sought out professionally by a peer.
How has your day been?
Before you react,
Yes, I celebrate these - Occurrences? Events? Things?
They are few and far between.
These are not gratitude bullets at the end of my day.
Or a sarcastic retelling of the hours of my day.
These are taken very seriously by my brain,
It begs to let these overtake the entirety of my functioning cells.
This is contemplating and mapping my professional presence, demeanour, and strategy, if I may…
Have I been underconfident, have I been arrogant enough?
Did I assert myself enough for others to listen,
or at least have them pretend to pay attention?
Have I pronounced my achievements loud and clear and often?
Have I been too kind, empathetic and not demanding?
Lest I let them think they can take what I say casually, it can wait.
Do I need these incessant queries?
These thoughts that seem to scrape at my dwindling confidence
at a rate faster than it took me to build it.
I tell myself that no one can take away my experience,
And I repeat it to others, peers and colleagues,
Forcing and intending myself to believe the adage,
But these questions that mar my conscience
Like a bludgeoning, berating, baneful evil twin,
They convince me to abandon the post, faster than one blinks.
It is then a quarrel between my thoughts and myself,
Believe the swirling eddies of jarring narratives, the make-beliefs, assumptions,
Or stand my ground, against these deceptive yet convincing lies.
The belief that I am pragmatic and intelligent enough to know the difference,
When I’m struggling to reach the surface through a whirlpool of such crazies,
That belief, reeking of positives and optimism - gets sucked into the deepest ocean bed.
What is the secret to this confidence potion that I have managed to circumvent?
That easily navigates these whirlpools of doubts
and doesn’t get suffocated by the pressures and depths of those voices
That wades through like flowers growing through concrete
as if they were always supposed to be there…
The cement was, of course, going to give in.
The tender would, of course, twist, persuade and rise through that hardness.
That ignorance, that indifference, that overlooking an entire human in the room.
It was the best day.
I commemorate.
I persevere.
I deliberate.