12.19.24 - on phone calls
a season of old pains aching and moving ahead anyways
can you believe i've been on this site for over 4 years now? i started tending to this site in october 2020, and i'm finding the gardening metaphor to be very apt. at the very start, there was a lot of activity, akin to sowing seeds and buying planters. i had grand visions of my site, where things would go and grow. 4 years in, it really is more about the everyday tending and upkeep. watering here and there, trimming off dead leaves. fresh excitement giving way to stability and regularity.
it's hard to speak about, but today i gained a conscious awareness of my aversion to phone calls. i have to make a lot of phone calls for work, as in my position i have to conduct outreach calls to new clients (i work in nonprofit, so don't go picturing me in sales or anything like that, please). even though these calls are very routine and scripted, i find it really hard to make these calls, be it in a timely manner or in calling consistently every day. the moment my day begins with doing a phone call, my entire schedule gets disrupted until i have a task that is accountable to someone outside of myself (like a scheduled meeting). so as you might have guessed, and i'm sure you can relate on some level to this, i've been so disgusted with myself for not being able to just get my shit together. like, it's just a fucking phone call, you know? why the fuck can't i get my shit together? i am a grown ass man and i'm balking at the idea of picking up the phone and leaving some voicemails?
shit's been going on in my life though, both personal and professional stressors, and i've been talking through things with my therapist. just really trying to absorb the idea of being kind to myself, because there's nothing without self-compassion. you can't bully yourself into growing, and all that good stuff. so, okay. i've been watching a lot of heidi priebe on youtube too, as i find her way of explaining attachment theory to be so compassionate and so productive. masterfully and with uncanny insight, she speaks on some of these patterns people hold onto, why they have these patterns, and firm encouragement to move towards the tried and true solutions. i was so struck by something she shared in a video. she said something along the lines of, 'you have to attend to the youngest, most vulnerable parts of yourself first (and with most kindness) because those are the parts most likely to act out in times of distress.' and i've been knowing that i have a tendency towards sitting with a feeling too long and lacking skills in the 'problem-solving' department (i'm a great supporter, but terrible leader because of it lol). so this seemed like a way forward, to work on reparenting myself and figuring out what to do with these big feelings now that i have them. and the first step to action is understanding. why do i have such a strong aversion in the first place?
sitting with feelings is so uncomfortable. being centered in my own self and experiences? wretched. wretched, disgusting, terrible. and yet...(NOTE TO SELF: put the kombucha girl gif here later). i have a lot of strong memories of making really uncomfortable phone calls. because i am fluent in english and my mother was not, i made a lot of phone calls for my mom. to the isp, the mobile provider, to doctors and banks and any service that was not being provided by someone Chinese. and like, being put in the uncomfortable situation of trying to translate but also trying to argue with some random teleworking clerk about pricing is actually really stressful. it felt like after every call, there was something i did wrong or something i should've said, despite being like, 12 or some shit.
In progress, will return later