This weekend I developed a weird craving to watch the first season of "Scrubs" on DVD, which we own. That's not all that unusual because I love that show to a degree that is highly abnormal, but about halfway through watching the DVDs while I cleaned my bathroom, I realized why I was doing it on this particular weekend. The first season of Scrubs is all about a group of medical students who are starting their first year as doctors. It's terrifying and they feel like they are screwing up left and right and they are going to be terrible doctors. And in a way, I relate to that right now. As you all know, I started a new job this last week. And even though I've been doing the same basic job I'm doing now for the last four years, I'm doing it at a differernt newspaper with new people and situations now, and it makes me very anxious. My first week has been overwhelming to say the least. There's something intimidating about coming into a new place where you have to learn everything from where the bathrooms are to what is expected of you on a day-to-day basis. It's stupid, and maybe it doesn't happen to more confident people, but it makes me feel less like a competent professional and more like an awkward junior high student with braces and acne.
The good news is that I have really cool new co-workers and editors who have been very kind to me in my first few days on the job and have graciously overlooked my breakouts of first-week jitters. (It's an embarrasing story ... I don't want to commit it to the eternal memory of the Internet.) The other good news is that things are getting better. I'm sure that in a few months, I will look back and laugh at the fact that right now, walking into my office is an absurdly frightening experience. Time makes a lot of things seem easier. That's one thing I know from experience.
So back to my TV habits this weekend. One of the things I love about Scrubs is that it is a narrated show. The main character, J.D., is the voice of the story, and he provides the over-arching insights that tie together the otherwise random incidents of the show. Possibly one of the finer speeches of the first season is delivered at the end of an episode that is all about the fact that sometimes, you just don't measure up to your own expectations in life. Here it is.

"I think one of the most universal human experiences is feeling alone. You'd never know it, but there are most likely tons of people feeling the same way. It may be because you're feeling completely abandoned. Maybe because you realize you aren't as self sufficient as you thought you were. Maybe because you know you should have handled something differently. Maybe because you aren't as good as you thought you were. Either way, when you hit that low point, you have a choice. You can either wallow in self pity, or you can suck it up. It's your call. .. But that's not what this story is about. It's about the day I realized that admitting we're not heroic is when we're the most heroic of all."

I don't really believe that our entire destinies rest on how we handle situations. If I thought I was the only one who could save me, I'm not sure I could get up and go back to work tomorrow in spite of my anxiety. Ultimately, I'm resting on a much higher power. But there's truth to the idea that sometimes you just have to keep going at it until you get it right. I'm also realizing how much I need the people in my life lately. Like Dan, who tells me that everything is going to be OK, and that if it's not, I can still be his wife. (I know, he's so generous.) And my parents, who believed in me enough to help me load up a truck and move off to Clovis, New Mexico when I was 21 and had no money because I had this crazy idea that I could be a journalist. Or my brother, who called me just now and told me about how nerve-wracking his first day of Marine drill was just to encourage me. Marines don't often admit that they were scared, and that meant a lot to me. Everyone, I think, is scared sometimes. But it doesn't mean they aren't doing the right thing.
So yes, this time of job transition is probably the final straw that will mean that I will forever think of 2005 as the year that I remembered that life is truly scary. But I will also remember that I didn't go through it alone. And because of that, I consider myself very blessed. Certainly not heroic, but very blessed.