Tag Archives: insecurity

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*Cringe*

HEY! Napping is a VITAL part of the writing process

Note on the picture: I have a pink IPod like the one the pig has. I hate it with a passion. On down moments from writing, I will plot new and innovative ways to bring its destruction.

So, I am in a strange position that I haven’t been in a long time. I should have foreseen it, but you know how me and common sense work. We have a fleeting love affair every once in awhile, but mostly we remain with our orbits barely intersecting in places. For the first time in a long time, I know someone is reading my blog that is new to me, and I actually give a crap what they think of me.

I know people read this. Most people I know who read it, I know are aware I am this strange person bumping through the world, and I know you guys love me anyway. The rest of the people who read this are lurkers or strangers. It is easy to be all brave and militantly open when you know people either love you, or they are strangers. I haven’t been worried about a reaction to a blog since “Strong Woman”, and suddenly I find myself thinking over everything I have written over the months, and covering my face with my palm.

I was thinking about what to write today, and I always came back to this thought. I had this safe but interesting post planned in my head about me trying to stick to this new idea of discussing and listening instead of debating. That seemed so safe, but so very not what I am about.

I have this aspect of my personality that I play chicken with myself. I have a lot of weird fears and insecurities, like everyone, and sometimes I bump up against one, and I dare myself to push it. I don’t know if this is a brave driving force thing or a stupid thing. It is probably both. I am forever scootching myself to the edge of my comfort zone just to prove to myself that I can. I see the potential for disaster.

So, the safe and sane thing would be to try to write a really cool treatise on how civil discourse works. Instead I am playing chicken with myself, and writing about feeling exposed and crazy.

Truth is, this blog is exactly me. That is the point of this blog, to be unabashedly me, because I know no matter how strange I feel, I know there are a lot of people like me. I wouldn’t suggest anyone else in the world being quite this open. I know I am taking this to an extreme, but I do that on purpose. I also know that ideally we reveal ourselves slowly to the people around us; giving the not so awesome bits wrapped with the really cool parts. All of my bits are out there, without awesome bacon wrappings.

The good thing is that I do know that anyone new who reads this, and still wants to be in my life, knows all of the crazy insecure bits, and still likes what they see. Anyone who reads this and flees, wouldn’t work with me anyway.

It still doesn’t keep me from cringing a little. Just a little though.

 
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In Dreams

In general, I have really vivid dreams that play out like movies, or well-made video games. Most mornings I remember them and  slap myself on the forehead for being such a weirdo in my mind.  Sometimes they are fantastic and kind of cool, like the dream where I got sent to the future with a breeding set of seal pups to start the re-population of the oceans after mankind burned all sea life from the oceans when the entire ocean revolted in a bloody war against man. I had to sneak through a massive dilapidated  hotel complex trying to get to the ocean so I could swim these three pups to safety. At one point in the water, I was guided by a ghost whale.  I had other dreams about being an assassin slayer in an airport. I have a lot of dreams about traveling through islands. I even had one dream that the cast of Desperate Housewives were all my friend. We were pirates together until they all left me in the pirate cove.

Like I said, most of these dreams are just strange tidbits from my subconscious, which manages to be weirder than my conscious, and mean little other than I spent a lot of years in college and I desire to travel. I might also have a thing for pirates and the ocean. (I had this really cool dream about these kids on an epic quest to figure out an ancient culture that lived on their island before them, and one is the long lost queen of this supernatural culture.) It is just how my brain works. I like stories, I make them up all of the time, so why not in my sleep?

Then I have other more personal and painful dreams that can stick with me for days.

I had one of those last night. My unconscious mind flayed me open and left me bare. My unconscious mind is a total asshole.

So, I am like everyone else, a deeply insecure mess. Some of us hide it better than others, but I believe everyone has periods in their lives that insecurities eat around the edges of their lives. No matter how sure of ourselves we are, sometimes that bullshit wriggles in without warning.

It is pretty obvious that I have been struggling with insecurity for almost a year now. I don’t think it was bad,  I have had a tremendous amount of growth from that insecurity, and I have taken more steps into becoming who I want to be then I have since leaving college.  I have just had a lot of “oh, no fucking way can I do this shit” moments or moments of finding my self severely lacking. I struggle with not feeling enough all of the time. Most of the time I do a pretty good job relegating it all to the back of my brain with only random outbursts.

Until my brain gives me the kind of dream I had last night.

In my dream, I ran into a friend from college. Let me explain. In reality, I haven’t seen this friend in many years, and, honestly, I am okay with it. We had a tumultuous friendship because she was a tumultuous girl. She was also insanely insecure and like to use me to bolster her self worth. Most of the time, that just meant she would brag to me or show me how smart/pretty/flirty/sexually attractive/wild/tough she was. Sometimes, she would just make really snide comments to tear me down and make herself feel better in tearing me down. Of course I didn’t realize it at the time since I was too young and too dumb.

Back to the dream…

She showed up at a party I was throwing. Her drug use had escalated from weed and pills to harder stuff and life had been harsh on her. She moved through the party trying to be the center of attention, like she enjoyed in college, but she couldn’t get enough attention, so she walked over to the group of friends I was talking with and started to belittle me viciously.

She belittle my weight, my intelligence, my near constant single status, my lack of a paying job, everything. She ripped me down into little shreds, attacking every little insecurity I had. I stood up to her, though. Inside I still felt everything she said, but I told her off. My friends stood with me.

Later that night, everyone kind of passed out. (I don’t know, it is a dream okay.) When I woke up I knew something was wrong. I went to my computer and found my filing system wrecked. She left a recorded video telling me she hadn’t erased anything but she had added massive quantities of stuff and messed everything up. She told me that she couldn’t let my behavior stand without retaliation. She wrecked everything and I had lost my book.

I have never felt so defeated in my life.

I know it was just a dream, but it still sticks with me. Part of me still feels ripped up from her nasty words and the devastation and helplessness of losing my book.

Even in my dream, my loved ones found a way to help me make it right. I think I am so pollyanna that even in my dreams I have a hard time feeling completely lost and hopeless.

I don’t think there was a point to sharing this. It was just on my mind. /Le Shrug.

 

 
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Plans? Silly Woman!

In my mind, I was going to write this epic year in review post that was moving and insightful and summed up every awesome thing I have ever written. Turns out I did that already with my 100th Blog post.

Oh yeah, Kathleen linked this to me and, since this is my damn blog, I am embedding it here even though it has nothing to do with anything.

So I wrote out two paragraphs linking things. I hated those paragraphs. I am struggling with the idea of this blog but I think it is because I am working too hard to present a certain thing. I am not so good at that.

I feel like I have said everything I would say here many times before. The only thing I am going to say again is “Thank You”

My world lately has been so wrapped up in writing. When it comes time to blog, all I want to write about is writing, the things I want to write about, or Star Wars The Old Republic. I worry a lot about being interesting or funny or insightful. Mostly, I think I should stop worrying about that.

I forget sometimes that so much of my happiness comes from accepting myself and being as open and honest as I can be here. I forget sometimes that the reason why this blog works is because I am willing to write boring shit sometimes as an exchange for the honesty.  I forget to accept the crappy posts with the good posts.

I am pisssed right now because I am feeling so insecure. I am hoping that insecurity is a normal human emotion. I am working on the premise that it is cyclical and the only weapon we have against it is to see it and try to see why it is wrong.

The happy news is that I am not insecure about my writing. I finally finished revising my first chapter and I think it will be far easier from here on out. I went back and read a lot of my posts and it turns out that I have some pretty killer posts. I am feeling pretty good with my abilities.

I am feeling ugly. I hate admitting that. I hate admitting that I am feeling insecure about my looks. It feels like a silly thing to be insecure about. Logically, it makes no sense since insecurity makes you even less attractive, but when have I ever been ruled by logic?

I wasn’t going to write about it since it feels like whining and fishing for sympathy and compliments but it is blocking my ability to write about other things. Normally when I try avoid writing about something that is really bugging me, I get frustrated with the fake feel of my blog.

So here it is: I feel ugly and unattractive.

I know it isn’t true. I do really know this. I also think that it is normal for women to feel like this on occasion. It becomes an ugly cycle because we feel less attractive so we start to hide in ourselves and then we get lost in the dullness that we cover ourselves in and then we have to fight even harder to get back to the shiny we had going before something set off the ugly cycle.

I can’t think of anything in particular that set off the ugly cycle. I know I will recover my shiny soon. I think I need to get back to working out like I was before I got the stomach flu.  I like me better when I work out.

On a side note: I found post it notes. I love post it notes. I have an office supply compulsion but post it notes are a particular weakness of mine. I have neon yellow post it notes with my crazy five-year old scrawl covering the sides of my computer screen. Simple things, people, simple things.

Also, Tina is a silly and my site is the right amount of feminine for a site with goddess in the title. Plus, I like purple

 
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A Whole Jumble of Things

So, Thursday, we meet again…

I am pretty sure right now I would be utterly incapable of writing coherent, good things, so I am just going to say things at my blog and call it done.

I am trying to normalize my hours. I am failing miserably. To be honest, I am not even entirely sure it is Thursday. I think I remember Monday. I drink coffee and tea and, instead of waking me up, I am just sleepy and giddy. I enjoy the sort of loopy, trance-like state of barely being able to stay awake, but having my brain running around like a crack-addled squirrel, but I am pretty sure I annoy the shit out of my friends. guy, Guys, GUYS, hey GUYS…

I have discovered two things harsh my creativity: news and sunlight. I can only handle so much news about dumb people doing stupid shit and possibly blowing up the world or ranty people on either side of the spectrum talking before my brain starts bleeding and I can’t slip into a state that allows me to create the world I need to be in to write my book, or, even worse, I start being a ranty douche bag myself.  Also, I can write while the sun is up if I am writing something like a blog or a paper. The more impossibly late it gets, the more creative I am. I don’t know why it is, but it just is.

So last night, while cracked out and exhausted from trying this stupid normalizing my hours stuff, I was still being all freaked out about revising. I couldn’t figure out why I was so intimidated by it that I was almost paralyzed.  I realized I am not adept at situations where I don’t know what is expected to succeed. I thrived in school because I knew what to do to get the results I wanted. Generally at my jobs I had a clear idea of what to do to be proficient at my job. Writing is this complicated, intangible process. You can study and research and read about writing, and it will help you be a better writer, but it doesn’t fully prepare you for the experience of going through the massive process of writing your first book. After I realized that, I became okay with being freaked out at every turn, because this is some strange on the job training.

Tina is being extremely kind,  and letting Kathleen and I have access to some photos. She is calling our blog stock photography. I am going to take advantage of it. Today, I am leaving you with the parting thought of a picture of Tina’s magnificent toes.

These are some MAGNIFICENT toes!

 
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