Skill Set

Every once in a while I’ll be staring at the computer, out of a window or at the pavement, thinking what am I actually good at. This usually happens after I’ve made a relatively large mistake, got my ego burnt or tried to be helpful but been nothing more than a bane.

It also happens when I think about what I am actually good for in the working world; what skills do I possess and which ones I haven’t got and wish for. My initial thought is that all my attributes are innate and quite frankly everything I have learned in this living in this world is nothing. Obviously this isn’t true and perhaps this first reaction is one of my weaknesses coming into. Still, I can’t deny that if I was to list my strengths a lot of them derive from what makes me, me. First off, one of my major strengths is that I find it very difficult to give up. I’m very dogged. If I was a premier league footballer, I’d be Michael Essien. As a result I tend to never give in easily when set a task. If barriers are put up I find ways to get around them. If it’s something I’m personally interested in then I am almost rude in getting something done. Alas, this strength is also a weakness because trying to get something done takes time and therefore sometimes it isn’t well spent and I end up celebrating a pyrrhic victory. Embarrassment, although I wouldn’t call it a weakness does affect me. Not many things get me embarrassed but those things that do make me recoil into myself and I just don’t do things and dwell on the event and occasion over and over again. It takes a long time for me to get back to being normal so I am relieved not many things get me embarrassed.

I’m not too hot on arithmetic either, or reading maps but do have pretty good ICT skills. I can rustle up a website and am relatively intermediate in most of the Office applications. I think this is linked to a general interest in technology and wanting to know how things work. I can spend hours learning a new application. Perhaps this has to do with the hours spent trying to work out a Rubix cube when I was younger. What I am not good at is demonstrating something at my desk, like when you are asked to bring up a document from the depths of a server just so it can be displayed to back up a comment that was discussed over coffee. I tend to sniff, stick my tongue out and try and find the Word wizard paperclip helper. It usually ends with me saying, It’s not where I thought it was, give me a couple of minutes and I’ll find it. I then spend a further five minutes getting rid of the paperclip helper.

One thing I thought I’d get out into the interweb world is confidence. I lack it quite a lot, I think. But sometimes I feel really confident, almost like untouchable. But these occasions are rare and the majority of time I feel that I don’t have any confidence, yet, just to add another layer of complexity, is that I do things that require confidence but don’t think it required any. For example, being put on the spot and having to greet and chaperone someone totally out of the blue. People will say to me, you must have a lot of confidence to do what you’ve done. I smile, but inside I think, seriously, I think I’ve got no confidence sometimes. Maybe I’ve got it but don’t realise that I have. In fact I’m not sure about this one entirely, so am opening it up here.

I am quite good at presentations though, and given enough time I can be darn hot at it. This was developed at school and something I’d always felt comfortable and actually thrived on. No question I’ve crashed and burned many a time when I’ve stood there, hand shaking thinking, I’ve totally forgotten everything. But then Alan Partridge snippets fall into my head like, I’d like a pint of bitter, and then everything seems to fall into place. At one stage I was giving so many presentations that I started to vibe off the crowd, knowing if they would dig any of my homemade dry japes I had thought of or if I should take this seriously.

Ok, enough of this self-appraisal, my glass of wine is empty and I need to go buy some toothpaste.