Gratitude Monday - The Olds Me Edition

Yesterday a memory floated into my awareness during one of my many daily unguarded moments. It made me laugh, and for a variety of reasons I am grateful.

Back in the mid -1980s I worked at the newspaper in Olds. I'd been away from reporting a few years when I got the job, but I got the work done each week. That's what matters.
Deadline was Tuesday afternoon. The paper had its own printing press so that left some flexibility in when things got done, but I preferred to get done earlier rather than later so that meant getting as much done on Monday as was possible. Monday was also the day I got the police report from the Olds RCMP detachment at 1:30 p.m. and then made the 10 minute drive to Didsbury for the report from that detachment.

Usually I'd get back to the office a bit after 3:30 p.m., slip down the alley to The Beehive, a convenience store, for a solid pick-me-up snack and then settle at my desk.
And that's when it happened.
I'd look down at my notebook, swing my vision to the blank paper in the electric typewriter and think:"What am I doing here? I can't write!"

I had a good chuckle yesterday when I remembered this bit of silliness. Of course I could write, but it didn't stop the occasional bit of panic.

I got over it at some point. I don't recall when I stopped thinking it, but I am grateful that I did. I am grateful that I saw through the absurdity of it. I am grateful that at some point back then thinking I wasn't qualified for my job suggested the people who had hired me were easily fooled. That was both insulting and silly in the extreme. It made me flip my insecurity over and tickle its tummy until it spilled its secrets.
I'd been looking at the world all wrong. Once it righted and I admitted my ability to write everything went well.
I am grateful I came to that realization three decades ago, and grateful for the memory and the laugh it gave me.