Balls.

What happened to me? I used to wake up with an idea in my head to open an ice cream store in Helena and went to bed with the rights for a Coldstone franchise in my hand. Okay, so it took longer than one day but I didn’t sit there waiting for someone else to make the move. I just went for it and wrote the emails myself, made the phone calls figuratively reaching down where a man should and going for it. Graphic. A little. I’m sorry. I just can’t figure out where my “balls” went!?

I’m sitting on the cuff of something potentially exciting with a company and a new client and instead of just going all in and turning it from potential to realistic, I’m sitting here watching the emails going back and forth and feeling sheepish and shy. SHEEPISH and SHY. If you know me, you would be shaking your head – Amy? Sheepish? Shy? My Mom would get it. But she knows me. What has rocked my confidence and outgoing mentality? Where are you? Hello!!!! WHERE ARE YOU?! I pitifully yell into the dark cave of my soul, frowning when the only response I hear are the sad echo’s of my own feeble voice.

EW.

Get ballsy, Amy! Harness your confidence! The quality of your brain and the value of its output! How? Start by doing. Prove to yourself in little ways that you do know what you’re talking about and the experiences you have had are worthy of drawing from. For instance, sitting here banging my head on the table trying to think of a blog post to write for a digital agency, feeling like I need to spend at least the next 36 hours reading marketing articles to boost my own marketing encyclopedia, when all I really need to do is think about what I’ve done at Title Nine or Sparkhell and the lessons learned there. What did I do that someone else could find useful? Wait, I did useful things? Yes, you dolt.  Why is it when you’re in a job and things are going well, you’re seeing change, you feel like you’re doing really great, then when you’re out of the job and having to pull from your responsibilities to show your skills and achievements, you feel like you come up empty handed? Deer in the headlights, can you please ask me the question again Mr. Interviewer? It’s like, I know I did alright, but why can’t I write down what it is that I did that says that I was doing alright?

Lesson learned? Set some goals for yourself when you start out. Then reflect on them in a month. Are they still in line with what your responsibilities and what you thought the job was going to be? Remember to build your foundation. Are you looking to increase social media traffic? Email click through rates? Well, how? What things can you do to get there? Write those out and get set to accomplishing them. Found something else entirely is more effective? Write that down and get to growing that channel. Refrain from looking at that experience as a failure of your first notion – it’s a success in learning about your community. That’s heaps! And now you’re immediately an adaptive creature. Golden ticket, kid!