Taking the training wheels off, one spoke at a time.

This is my last week in the office face-to-face with my boss (who I also consider somewhat of a friend, I might add, as we’ve known each other for 6 years now, and we’re actually the same age), who’s likely going on maternity leave the day I return from Jamaica.

And as I sat in meeting after meeting, I looked around and realized, holy shit, I’m going to have to make all of these decisions on my own. By myself. Without her as my sounding board. And that’s scary.

I need my training wheels! (or do I?)

Sure, I know my shit. I know I do. But she knows the business far deeper than I do (I know enough to ‘be dangerous’ but not to the level she does, with so many nuances to understand and differentiate between. The technology my company creates is well, highly technical. Acronym city. Nuf said). And when we’re in the middle of a conversation with various product managers and such, I confess, I get intimidated. I KNOW my profession ((8.5 years worth and damn proud of it!). I KNOW the answers, but when it comes to judgment calls on certain things, that’s still somewhat foreign to me.

And I know, it’s only been two-ish months and I need to cut myself some slack. Yes, I do and I will. However, I also know that there’s a fair amount of ‘faking it till I make it’ that I have to do and at the base of it all, I need to know my shit. I need this stuff to sink in that I’ve taken notes upon notes on. That I end up just relying on her to answer for me. As my crutch. She won’t be around much longer as my crutch.

So, in the next two weeks before my trip to Jamaica and the whirwind 8 weeks to follow that while she’s gone, I am vowing to take the training wheels off, one spoke at a time. I will celebrate ‘little rocks’ and achievements. And I will learn from my mistakes (though I hope to not make too many!).

I’m a little bit scared, a little bit intimidated, a little bit stressed that it’s going to be insanely busy (and I thought the last two were upside down and sideways!). But at the core of it, I am excited. I know that come June, I will re-read this letter and it’ll feel amazing (I am purposely not re-reading it because I don’t want to ‘remember’ too much about what I said. I want to read it freshly for the first time in June), something I never thought I could do.

I can’t wait for that moment to arrive.

But in the meantime, I’m going to take it one day at a time, and one mile at a time towards that 48,000 mile mark.

*annnd pep talk over*