Add “loser, failure” to yesterday’s list

Today was a pretty rotten day. A Project From Hell at work got me stressed out to the point where I was kind of laughing uncontrollably at the futility of it all — and y’all know me, it takes a lot to get me worked up like that — and none of it would have been difficult if we hadn’t had to work through STUPID CONVIO (there, I said it). I won’t bore you with details, so suffice it to say that they specialize in making the simple complex. Also, for whatever reason, I woke up this morning without much patience to begin with, so this project got me on the edge pretty quickly.

By the time I was able to take a quick break late afternoon and meet Doc at the dive shop to pick up our equipment for our upcoming lake dive, I was stretched pretty thin. In the dressing room, attempting to squeeze my (apparently) enormous ass into every rental wetsuit they had in the shop to no avail, I snapped and bawled like a baby.

You should know that I am almost six feet tall and while I’m not exactly “fat,” I do have a decent pear shape to my body. It would seem that I am one-of-a-kind in the diving world, as all wetsuits seem made for short women or thin men. The ladies’ sizes were way too small for me, and the only men’s wetsuit that fit over my butt was an XL, and I could have stored a week’s worth of snacks in the top part of it. The dive shop people didn’t seem to understand that I needed one with a small top and a large bottom. They kept suggesting larger and larger men’s sizes (to get the bottom to fit) or handed me smaller women’s sizes (to get the top part to fit). But never the twain shall meet.

Anyway, after struggling out of breath to get the stupid thing on, zipping my thigh into the zipper, and whacking the funny bone in my elbow on the counter, I just couldn’t take it anymore and broke down.

Doc hugged me and reminded me that I didn’t have to do anything that I didn’t want to. This whole week I have been feeling more and more anxious about our upcoming certification dives, to the point where a little voice in my head has been whispering to me “I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do this” over and over. It’s supposed to be fun, and I feel nothing but dread thinking about it.

So standing in the dressing room, Doc’s arms around me and tears streaming down my face, I pulled it together and made a choice. I stopped struggling with the neoprene, put my clothes back on, and had them cancel my equipment rental. I’m still going along for the ride, but I’ll snorkel or sit on the boat instead.

Rationally I think I made the right decision: if I’m feeling this much anxiety about it, then it’s probably not something I should do. But at the same time, this was a personal challenge for me, something I am afraid of that I was going to work to overcome… and I gave up. I feel embarrassed and ashamed because I declared to everyone that I was going to do this! I was going to face my phobia head-on and overcome it! I am strong! I can do anything! And I gave up, I failed. I have to eat my words, and tell people that no, I didn’t go diving, I gave up and didn’t follow through with my plans and goals.

I don’t think anyone’s going to bust my chops for it. But I’m sure beating myself up about it. I can’t help it.

How do you deal with it when you realize that you’ve set too lofty a goal for yourself, or that you’re just lazy and can’t follow through with things that might be harder than normal?