Adulting makes me nervous. To be quite honest, all of the pressures and expectations of being a man, being a dad, being the provider make me nervous.
Adulting
Being sure I’m gonna have enough money for things. Being sure i will still have my job from one year to the next. Hell, worrying about whether or not my kids are to have a greater quality of life than I did growing up. These are all the expectations of being a father and being an adult. These are the things that make me nervous in my life.
Although it’s a cliché, it really is true: you don’t get instructional manuals when it comes to being an adult, or parent. The truth is, we’re all out here just trying to figure out as we go, faking it until we make it. 
Non-confrontational to a fault
The truth is, I hate confrontation. I hate delivering a bad news. I hate disappointing people and I hate telling people people know. I know that’s not really a healthy way to live, but that’s just how I’m hardwired.
It’s the anticipation
The funny thing about nerves and anxiety is that it’s our anticipation of things that ultimately end up being worse than the actual situations themselves. We get nervous about the feeling of making that perv role of the dice. If we’re leaving one job for another, our fears about doing something new are often far worse than actual experience of doing something new. That feeling of dread that we get when we have to deliver bad news is often worse than the actual experience of delivering the bad news. 
A self-fulfilling prophecy
The problem with being so nonconfrontational is that sometimes the active avoidance, the act of trying to soften the blow for the other person, makes things every bit as bad as you built it up to be in your head. In a lot of ways, avoidance ends up becoming a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts. By trying to avoid a problem, you make the problem just as bad, or even worse, as you’ve actually built it up to be in your own mind.
If any of the sounds convoluted, or confusing, that’s because it is. This is what it’s like being in my head sometimes. I’ve gotten better with it as I’ve gotten older, but every now, and then, we all resort back to our old ways.
Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts:
- Of Training Wheels and Christmas Lights
- Charity Starts at Home (And I’m Back in My Childhood One)
- The Muscle of Empathy
- Where Do We Go From Here? Five Years Since January 6.
- Bugs, Boundaries, and the Art of Not Being Invisible
The article “What Rattles Me” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.
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