Sometimes it’s just glorified filing, with life lessons.

It’s a good thing we have a separate workspace for these temple archives, since I’m taking up the entire room with this project.

This is one of those “I know my system but I’m not ready for houseguests yet” scenarios. Yesterday, I left the room and came back and, for a second, saw it through someone else’s eyes (whose, I don’t know, just anyone else’s, probably). What I had going on would probably never make sense to anyone who didn’t already live inside my head.

Something for me to focus on, then, for sure, is remembering how to think as a team member. That’s some of my hardest work, really, because I’m always so “never mind I got it.” I love that personal and communication growth can come from this process too.

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In other news I’m prepping for my first oral history recording, which is exciting but also a little nervewracking, despite the fact that probably 10 people will ever hear it. I’m interviewing a man who is central to my capstone project; we’ve talked before and he’s an easy conversationalist, though he makes me nervous.

He’s a really kind man, and he wants people to know the things I’m recording and writing down (the whole thing started when I found his recently-donated papers in a university archive). I hope I can do him justice. He asked me a few weeks ago what my thesis was and I couldn’t verbally articulate it, just stumbled all over myself and then spiraled a bit, thinking “geez, that’s so unclear; you don’t know what you’re doing or talking about.” I’m a deer in headlines sometimes with questions like that, because imposter syndrome thinks it should answer for me but it can’t.

Yay, more personal growth stuff mixed in with all these practical skills.

I don’t even know if I’m doing a good job at this though, I just hope I am. I want to make sure the work I’ve done is helpful to all the kind people who have thanked me for doing it. But also, this could be a really fun way to get old.