Comfort Circles

A few weeks ago, I bade a sweaty ado to my beloved 5-acre mound of bleached limestone and feral children, sped north for two days on Interstate 95 for a pit stop at home, and then flew out to a friend’s place in Los Angeles to begin a brand-new chapter of early-20s confusion masquerading as a career path. I arrived by ferry to Catalina Island, California’s southernmost Channel Island, several days later. As we chugged into the gray, seal-filled harbor, my overwhelmed brain filled with startling visions of Jurassic Park and a fervent wish for binoculars. After months of staring blankly at the singularly flat iguana-peppered Florida landscape and her bright bathwater ocean, huge red-brown cliff faces and pebbled beaches turned by a navy sea looked like a perfect front for renegade scientists and their pterodactyls. Once safely ashore with no dinosaurs in sight, we loaded our backpacks, surfboards, and various percussive instruments into formerly white vans and headed west along the island’s lone dirt road, ruddy spirals swirling behind us into the palms.

We live and work in a remote camp on the equally remote island for an organization founded by famed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau’s first son. We teach visiting students about ecology, marine biology, sustainable living, rock climbing, astronomy, art, mindfulness, and the like. My kids are mostly middle schoolers, my boss is heavily pregnant, and my coworkers are fire spinners, free divers, and scone bakers. They celebrate the lunar solstice, sing loudly and often, and press their own oat milk. I’ve been here for just about a month, and I have already experienced the most breathtaking excursion of my short life, which involved a sunny morning, a kayak, a kelp forest, a cave, and a nosebleed. I wear two wetsuits in the frigid water no matter the UV index and sometimes consider three when staring down the barrel of our bioluminescent night snorkel, or roughly once a week.

I was eating black bean nachos with a table of seventh-grade boys the other day when one peered through his transition lenses and asked me what the worst part of my job was. The truth, although I didn’t share this with Magnus, is that the only downside of this lifestyle that I can think of is the new, nagging, ceaseless suspicion that I am not enough for it. The feeling started to develop before I even had two dusty boots set firmly on the island. While waiting for the boat at the ferry terminal, I looked a few of my new coworkers up and down and assumed they were jaded fifth-season Catalina veterans. I soon learned that they were rookies just like me - they just looked cooler. Since then, I’ve been blown away at my cohabitants’ capacity for talent and their self-assurance in both teaching and in life. Hell, I can’t even take a shower without hearing a perfect rendition of Angel from Montgomery pouring out from the next stall over. As a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none, would-have-majored-in-general-studies-if-only-that-was-still-a-thing type of human, it’s been a humbling and uncomfortable experience. It makes me miss Florida, when all I had to do was pour stale cereal off the Old Seven Mile Bridge to feed the open-mouthed campers below at snacktime.

Lately, in processing my feelings about this newfangled imposter syndrome, I’ve found myself leaning on something we teach our students at the climbing wall. It’s the idea of comfort circles, a trio of concentric rings arranged like a dartboard. The bullseye is our comfort zone, a relaxed state of mind in which we can remain indefinitely but experience no significant positive personal growth. The middle band is our growth zone, in which we challenge ourselves just enough to expand our horizons in a rewarding way. The outermost layer is the panic zone, where we’ve pushed ourselves too far into a highly distressed, unproductive state. We learn best when we’re in that second zone, able to untether ourselves just enough to evolve.

Pounding this into childrens’ brains week after week has made me recognize that in my own life, I tend to shy away from challenges. I am generally content to be a middle-of-the-road former high school athlete, a fine public speaker, and a truly tone-deaf passenger seat singer. Most things come fairly naturally to me, but I hesitate to pursue them for fear of eventual inadequacy. I am both cautious and readily pleased. During this strange year just out of school, it’s been easy for me to feel lost and thus to stick like a tick on a Labrador to what I already know and love. In this new workspace, however, I am finally learning to sit with my discomfort, whether it’s physical, like the freezing Pacific under a new moon, or emotional, like feeling vastly underprepared for the job and also decidedly lacking in plant-themed arm tattoos.

The funny thing about all of this is that when speaking to my coworkers about it, many have expressed that they feel the same way. How is this possible? Do we all sense that we’re being baptized by fire, when really we’re all doing just fine? I’m starting to think so. Every morning, I know that I’m lucky to wake up and jump off the dock under the rising sun. Hours later, I’ll get to watch that same sun bathe the mountains in golden light as my favorite constellations line up to spiral and flip above the ridgeline. My best friend told me the other day that you never want to be the smartest person in the room. I’m beginning to believe that it’s okay that I bring with me all that I am and no more, because in the end, that’s the best I can do.

Two of my coworkers on a ridge hike, with the San Gabriel Mountains visible across the channel in the background.