That daily thing?
Well speaking of incompetence, that brings me to a thought I wanted to voice and the actual reason for me blogging today;
My new job as a lifeguard.
Right now, I don't feel fully incompetent, but I also don't feel competent.
I want to be an investment: not an employee hired because they were short on staff, valued for being an extra body, but actually someone who was worth hiring and keeping even if they become borderline-overstaffed.
I want to become the best lifeguard they ever hire.
Someone who starts out with the very very big growing pains. Who is genuinely not very good, just adequate (and barely so), but who will grow to become a basically perfect employee.
I'm not there yet.
But I genuinely think I could be.
I don't feel like I'm an impostor, a fake, a fraud (feelings I had when I worked before at my old job especially since my hiring process was somewhat...unorthodox).
I feel like I was hired on the merits of having earned it, been worthy of it, working for it, and that I can live up to that promise.
I want to be better.
I need to be better.
There's presumably an acceptable growth period where they know I won't be really prepared for the job, so won't be fully competent, won't be fully adept, won't be doing everything I'm meant to, will make mistakes, will need help, etc.
But that period is temporary and I need to be capable of doing my job basically on my own after that grace period has left.
I have a genuine desire, a genuine drive, to be better, to become the best.
I want to become an employee seen as the most valuable lifeguard to have ever been hired.
I want to become not just an extra body, who is okay at the job but is clearly not great at lifeguarding, to becoming a model lifeguard for all other lifeguards to strive towards becoming.
There's no fear of losing the job behind this drive.
There's no feeling of needing to prove it to myself behind this drive.
There's nothing ulterior in my motive here, although I will admit to bonuses like the above and similar and more.
It genuinely comes from a deep-slated desire to just be better at lifeguarding.
I always knew I enjoyed being a lifeguard, and that I genuinely wanted to lifeguard, not just as a job, but because I know I can be good at the job, and it's one of the few jobs I know I can be good at.
But the more I lifeguard again, the greater this desire to just be better at lifeguarding becomes.
I don't want to slack off.
I don't want to become lazy.
I don't want to become so-so.
I want to excel. I want to do the job right. And that's just a passion. Just a genuine desire to do the job not just well, but as close to perfect as is possible for a human.
To be better than I was before.
To improve at my job.
I know I'm not there yet.
But I WANT to get there.
Sooner rather than later.