Self Doubt
I'm still here :). I have been given another week's reprieve because my hard drive needs to be "enlarged" or some such technical thing. I don't understand or care....I'm just tickled I don't have to mess with converting anything until next week.
I did get a new keyboard, though. It is quite nice, very quiet, but I can already tell that I am going to have to get a wrist support or something. My hands started hurting as soon as I started to type on it. For some reason, the keys are "boxier" and higher and the entire keyboard seems to be raised up more from the typing platform than the older model. It will work out once I make a few modifications and additions to my workstation.
I have created a new JPG for my site. And....it's Me! I scanned a picture that was left over from my "resume days" and have uploaded it to my "Bio" page. Now you can all see what I look like when I have makeup on. (I promise you--you wouldn't want to see me without makeup!) The picture is a few years old, but it still looks like me. The only real change is that I now need reading glasses which are usually either hanging from the tip of my nose or perched a-top my head.
7:30 p.m.
I'm sitting in our little den, listening to "Promised Land" echo from the T.V. in our living room. Keith and I love this little show, so full of family love and innocence. It is a pleasant change from most of the other programs broadcast nightly. I should be in there with him, cuddled up in my chair and working on my latest "project" (I'm crocheting snowflakes for next year's Christmas tree), but instead, here I sit. I spent every spare minute today working on this entry. But for some reason, not one thing I wrote came out the way I wanted. I am beginning to get so critical of my entries that I find myself censoring many of my thoughts before I can publish them.
By using the word "censor" I don't mean to imply I am filled with profanity or indecent ideas. No, it's more like I have this little "critic" standing off in a corner of my mind squaking "What do you want to write that for?" Suddenly the images and words that used to flow so freely, seem to choke just before they are released at the keyboard.
I have been at this point before, but never with my journals. It had happened with my music (12 years of classical piano) and even with my artwork (copper plate etchings), but my words , they always came with such ease.
I think, perhaps, that I have heaped my plate too full of "goodies". There is so much that I want to do that it feels like I am spreading myself too thin to accomplish anything well. And, as this journal draws more and more readers, I feel more and more the need to "perform" and to perform well, lest I offend or dissapoint someone. ..."lest I offend or dissapoint someone." That's it--that is what is troubling me--that old urge to perform, to please, and to be something special for someone else. Like an old enemy that had been locked away for so long, I have once again dropped my guard against the tyranny of self doubt.
Am I the only one who struggles so with these feelings? And why, when I think I have finally put them behind me, do they creep up and overcome me, paralyzing me from doing that which I want to do the most? When I was a child, I couldn't wait to grow into an adult. I thought then, that when I became a woman, I would suddenly become self-assured and in control. But that didn't happen; I am still the same "child", looking for the approval of others.
So this little 45 year old "child" will close her entry with a promise to herself to write more freely next time. And to remember that it is in the process that real joy is to be found, not the product.
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