If you came up to me and asked me if I'm confident, I would say yes. There would be no debate or question about it. I'm confident. I'm confident in who I am and my personality. I'm confident in my work and beliefs. I do have my own insecurities and doubts about myself, but who doesn't? Nobody is perfect, but I don't let those brief moments dominate my overall feelings towards myself.

As a teenager, my friends and I would frequent the local battle of the bands at some dirty old venue.
I recall seeing a particular band and this really cute guy was playing bass. He was tall and full-figured and he was in a punk rock thrash band wearing a kilt. In my eyes, this guy was awesome. I had no idea who he was, how old he was, or what he was about. I just knew that he was cute and I liked his band's music. After his band finished their set, I saw him mingling around with some friends by their merch table. I made it my quest to ditch my friends and walk right up to this guy. I tapped him on the shoulder and said the standard, "Hello, I like your band. You guys are super cool." He probably said something like a quick "Thanks, glad to hear it." It was my turn to respond and I told him, "So basically, I think you're really cute and was wondering if I could have your number?" He smiled, we exchanged numbers, and developed a friendship from there. If anyone is curious, we ended up going on a few dates, but it didn't mount up to anything serious. That was partially due to him moving away and not giving me his new number and because he was a little too sexual for teenage me at the time.

Why am I telling you this story? Well, the point was... society always says the guy is supposed to approach the girl and get her number. I made it my mission to do the opposite. I sought out after the guy and asked for his phone number. I did something completely unorthodox in every movie you've ever seen. I had courage, ambition, and curiosity. I wanted something and I got it. I'll admit, it didn't end up being as great as it sounded, no offense (in case he's magically reading this...)

The me back then had so much "guts" to stand on the edge of life. I was a little reckless and rebellious at the time and I've always had this mentality of being independent and a do-everything-yourself kind of girl. I didn't want to rely on men to do things for me. I didn't want to succumb to the petty little tasks that women were obligated to uphold. I wanted to be the mechanic, the hockey player, the tattoo artist, the metal band rocker.... I wanted to express and embrace everything different than what was expected of me.

In school, if I had to give a speech in front of the class or school, I could project my voice confidently and I excelled at discussing whatever subject matter I needed to share with them. Speeches were easy and kind of fun now that I think about it. However, talking one-on-one with a teacher or an important figure made me nervous and uncomfortable. I think high school was the time when I truly embodied being so anti-social that it got to the point that I would take detours through certain halls at different times to avoid talking to certain class mates or teachers. Now that I think about it, it's not that they were annoying or anything, it's just that I didn't really enjoy being held up or bothered. I just wanted to get from point A to point B without interruption. Usually when I'm walking, I'm thinking and talking to myself in my head. I'm not doing it in the "I'm crazy" sense. I'm organizing my tasks in a mental list and crossing off things that I did, things I need to do, if I should adjust them into a specific order, etc... and I hated it when people stopped me and my train of thought just goes blank. To this day, that still happens, but now I'm smart enough to write everything down and refer back to it if I do get interrupted. It's incredibly frustrating to forget something and you spend the next few minutes, hours, days, or even weeks, trying to search through your brain to figure out what it is.
RAM, y'know? :(

After high school and college, I went straight into the work field but my social life deteriorated to pretty much nothing. I didn't spend much time with people and I especially didn't spend much time talking. This lack of interaction and practice of it is what made my social awkwardness and anxiety really get the best of me over the years. Where I currently work, we have a paging system and you can make announcements as well. If I was on one end of the building and I needed to communicate with someone on the other end, the logical thing to do is to locate the nearest phone and page that person with their extension number or make an announcement asking them to page your location. Awkard Kayla however, would walk from point A to point B to relay said message and eventually I realized that this was wasting a lot of time. So I began paging people silently and if they didn't answer after a few times, then I would make the walk OR wait for them to walk by at some point during the day. Eventually that was also very wasteful so I had to muster up the courage to make announcements for paging. A few years ago the thing that made me nervous became a part of my daily work-day and something else took over. Aside from announcements to page people, we can make announcements to highlight something awesome happening that day and a lot of people at work are too busy to schedule that into their day or they don't have the creativity or voice-personality suited to make the announcement catchy/effective. However, I have a nice background with speaking and being creative, so I took this as an opportunity to benefit the store and also improve on my nerves. Now, I can make announcements, and page people without hesitation.

Now, I deal with new obstacles. I acknowledge that I've made improvements, but my work is not yet done. There are many road bumps to overcome in my life. I work in a place where I'm surrounded by people all day. People who can be easily confused and frustrated if the situation arises and it's part of my job to help them be less confused and to help avoid them feeling frustrated OR fix whatever was frustrating them. This sort of thing involves greetings, vocal interaction and conversation, being versatile with answering questions and providing solutions...you know, your basic customer service. For some reason, despite being able to give speeches, page people, approach strangers at concert venues when I'm a teenager...the "now" me experiences hesitation and anxiety from just saying quick hellos and "can I help you?" to the people walking by. This honestly isn't that big of a deal for me because I've been doing it so frequently now, that it too is becoming second nature and very easy. This can essentially be crossed off the list of "things Kayla is awkward at" but I'm not quite willing to say that's true because there are still situations where I'll go to approach and say hi to someone who looks like they need assistance, and they completely ignore my presence or quickly dismiss me by just walking by. Like okay...thanks, good to know I'm not here and nobody can see me. -does a little ghosty dance- boooooooo weeee oooooo wahahaha. I'm a potato!

The reason why I wanted to write this blog today is because I experienced something new for the first time that really made me go WOOOOOOOOOOOW I do have anxiety/am awkward. So let me paint the picture for you.

I'm in aisle silently working and quite focused on what I'm doing. I'm greeting the customers that walk by here and there. I even assisted a few folks who were confused about item locations or if we had any extra product...no problem. THEN - a woman in her 30's probably and a child, definitely pre-school age is approaching my location. She's got a basket of things in one hand and the child has a kiddie cart and they're strolling along and then she tells her kid "okay we need to go into aisle 5, mommy needs to get stuff in 5" and this little kid just flips the hell out and goes another direction. I didn't hear the conversation beforehand (due to distance and not eavesdropping) so I'm not sure what the conversation was about or what kind of mood the kid/mom was in before they were in close range to me. But anyways... kid is starting to whimper and whine and the mom is trying to calm the kid down and tell him that it will be quick and she just needs a few things. She already had a handful of things in her basket and the kid seemed to be okay with being in the store up until this point. I think that maybe the kid hates aisle 5 and just didn't want to go there because maybe he saw something straight ahead that seemed more interesting. The kid is not willing to give up the tantrum so he begins crying and the mom is trying to steer the kid cart into the aisle and the kid whips the cart around back out to the hall and she's trying to keep calm to not draw attention to them. She looks at me and goes "you see what I'm dealing with right now." And blank. I'm blank. I don't know what to say. Do I say "Yeah" because I acknowledge that she's dealing with a kid being a little brat right now... but then I think...what if she takes offense to me saying yeah because she thinks that I think her kid is bad. What if I say no? What if she thinks that I think that the kid is acting okay. What if I do nothing and she thinks I'm ignoring them...what do I do? What can I do to make the kid calm down? And while this is all going in my head, she's trying to get her kid and the cart to go into the aisle and the kid just flops onto the ground and doesn't want to stand up or walk. The cart is stranded and her basket is on the ground. She goes to pick up the kid and the kid is crying and it's getting louder and louder.

So I'm thinking in my head, what can I do? What can I do? I have no idea how to handle a frustrated mother with a crying kid. I don't know how to "kids." I have no kids...I don't like kids...I don't like being around kids, I don't like taking care of them that much and I don't know what I could say or do to calm the kid down that would also make the mother feel some kind of relief.

My initial idea was that I could approach the kid and tell them that they shouldn't cry and that soon they could go home and play after mommy gets groceries. But once again, I didn't want the mom to be like, "don't tell my son what to do, I can handle it fine, its my kid..leave us alone." Then I thought...well maybe I could give him a sticker, but then I remembered we got rid of the stickers and so I had think of another idea. I didn't want to tell him that if he's good, mommy will give him a prize or something, because not only would I be leading him to believe he would be getting something, that's also forcing the mom into buying something and once again...I didn't want to make the situation worse by pissing her off or making the kid upset because I lied to him.

So I'm still working and every now and then I look over at them because it's right next to me..inches away from me, and the noises kept making me look over, plus I'm also mentally processing what to do. So two things happen at this point. She shoves the cart away from the kid and grabs her basket while holding the kid against her and she says, "I guess we have to do things the hard way then...I guess we'll just go home and mommy won't get her groceries." And she storms off. I hear them head back to another aisle, so I'm not sure if she was putting the items back or if she was just getting other things in a different aisle or what. After all of this is said and done and the aisle is quiet and lifeless, almost as if nothing even happened to begin with, I came up with a solution! This idea would make the kid happy and quiet for a while, and it would let the mom continue her shopping in peace for a bit. She might be concerned about the choice, but considering her options (and my other ideas) this was our best bet. I was going to approach her and ask her if it was okay for her son to have a free cookie from the bakery and ask him if he wanted one. This would most likely make him stop crying and excited for a free cookie. She would be relieved that he's not crying but potentially hyper for a little while but by the time I came up with this idea...they were gone. I don't know if they were somewhere else in the store or if they did end up leaving, but all that was left in the aisle with me was a little red kid cart and silence.

This scenario was brewing and brewing in my head. I was so concerned with making a decision and how to make it and if making it would be a good or bad idea that instead of doing something when I had the chance, I did nothing. I'm partially disappointed in myself for not thinking of the cookie sooner. But then I realized that I was mildly panicking in my head. I was experiencing anxiety and I became aware of it immediately after.

I've read before that people who deal with anxiety think of things to say or do, but by the time that they have the thought ready to harvest, the opportunity has already passed and so they're left feeling empty and unmoved as if they didn't even try to begin with.

So dear lady with the cranky kid...I'm sorry I didn't do anything to ease the situation. I wanted to, honestly I really did. I just froze up like a statue because I didn't know what to do. I was in the middle of a decision war with myself and what solution I could provide you with that by the time I provided one, the opportunity was gone, and there was no way of helping.

Typically when someone needs help or if I can see that they're frustrated, confused etc... I can pick up on it immediately and ask the right questions or say the right things to make them happy again. I can find the product for them or offer a deal to them because the one they wanted was out of stock. I can offer so many things to people several different ways but this was the first "kid" situation I've come across and I had no idea how to respond to the child or the mom.

I know now what to do if this situation pops up again...but holy shit that was a mental rollercoaster ride. Kids make me nervous and irritated. Crying babies, toddlers, and tweens are the worst. They themselves aren't bad. It's just that their noises and behaviors drive me up the wall and spike my anxiety sky high.

This was lingering like a bad taste in my mouth and I had to get it out there before it was gone.