My project manager asked me today if I’d fancy going to the customer site after January “for a while” i.e. a month or so.

That’s the customer in Sweden.

And the arse end of Sweden at that, by all accounts.

I turned it down but mostly, as I don’t feel I have a good enough level of the technical knowledge I’m supposed to be getting from my employers yet. Recently, the work has become much more interesting and is starting to lead me towards the knowledge I wanted to gain about a year ago but at the moment I think presenting myself at a customer site with my level of knowledge would make the company look bad and more to point, make me look like an arse.

My problem is that despite the Project Manager saying it was fine, I’ve been stressing about it all evening. What seems to be bugging me is the implication that I’m not good enough – that I can’t handle the responsibility of the job. Being me, that leads onto internal pondering about other jobs I’d to do like but can’t due to my rubbish-ness, followed by a short trip to “imsoshititsincredible”.

Realistically, the company needs to give me the time to get the experience I want/need, and are asking more of me than is reasonable for no benefit to myself. To get any better at the job, I’ll have to spend a fair chunk of my own time working on training and I’m not sure I want to. There are a million things I’d rather spend my free time on, and which I’d be more interested in learning about, so the choice is whether the job is enjoyable enough to spend my own time on or whether I look for something else entirely. So why do I still feel panicky?

In case you note an unusual hint of positivity, I’ve been reading Susan Jeffers’ book “Feel the fear and do it anyway”. For all its annoying Californian Woo-Hoo-ness, which I usually scoff at, I’m finding it irritatingly useful. I’ve read about a third of it and managed to write an honest blog entry that didn’t cower behind frivolous self-effacing jokes.

Well, not entirely. Maybe by the Bibliography.