"oh no i'm not as good as i thought i was"

when confronted with the fact that your actual, non-hypothetical skill level is different from whatever level you dreamed up in your head, you have two main choices of where to go from there. 

justify it away with disclaimers, refuse to look directly at the discrepancy, and begin to orient your life in such away that shields you from experiencing further such situations. 

or face it head-on: square your shoulders, nod curtly at the unfortunate reality, decide to accept that the level you imagined yourself to be was just an illusion—and move forward anyway, because if you're ever going to reach that level, turns out you're going to need to put in some work. 

i'm discovering recently that i'm not as good at this skill as i thought i was—as in, i thought i was pretty good at accepting my weaknesses at face value and working toward improving them. 

in many ways, though, that hadn't really been the case. 

building a new life with my fiancé has. required me to be bad at so many things: new languages, new modes of transportation, new lifestyle behaviors. i used to think i was pretty much good at everything! and now here i was, face to face with a dozen things i was incredibly bad at—and would continue having to be bad at in order to move forward. 

i began to realize that for years, i had oriented my life toward protecting myself against experiencing this feeling. it's much easier to feel in control when you don't go out much, and only spend time doing things you already feel you're good at. 

now opening myself back up to the world, i find innumerable things i am bad at. as much as i can tolerate, i will face them head-on and keep moving forward.