Random Thought Time

I was talking to a dear friend today, about my writing neuroses (trust me -- I got 'em), when this occurred to me:

It's actually the easier thing to consider myself hamstrung by my own incompetence, because then I don't actually have to try and thus risk making any mistakes. I'm well aware of this, that being so hard on myself is, in some ways, a way to keep myself from the scariness of mistakes and the even scarier prospect that maybe I won't make them. Because, if I don't make them, then I have to push myself a little harder the next time to raise my game every time I sit down to a story. If I don't raise my game, I don't get any better. If I do raise my game, I risk failure all over again. What scares me is not so much the mistakes I can see, but the ones I'll be too ignorant to see. And yet of course I know those will be there too. That's the only way I will improve. But it does leave some side effects, like cringing every time someone recommends a story. Since it's not a story I wrote, about characters I write about, it's easy for the more neurotic parts of me to read that as dismissal.

But even if it is, so what? That's the $64,000 Question, really. Even if someone dismisses my stories, or finds them boring, or whatever, so what? Their finding some fault with my work doesn't

a) mean there actually is fault with my work, or
b) that their reaction automatically demands a reaction in turn from me, or
c) that either of us is right. Or wrong.

The reason this is important to me, even if it's just neurotic psychobabble to anyone else, is that I have spent a lot of my life being a slave to my guesses at other people's opinions. Not their actual opinions, mind you. Just what I guess they're thinking -- and I've even gone so far as to contradict in my head what comes out of their mouths, so that no amount of reassurance from the other person is enough.

Fucked up, you say? And you would be right. Very fucked up.

It's such an easy thing to end this post on a high note and say, "Today, I will stop! *sniff* *sniff* Today I promise myself I'll do better!"

Blaaaaah.

How do I know if I can stop thinking like this? I really don't know. I'm only human, and this means I'll probably keep thinking this way for a while longer at the same time I struggle not to. I am struggling not to. I don't like the parts of me that take every little thing personally and overreact and cringe when the wind blows. I want her to get over herself already. But those parts of me are large, and they are very tenderly sensitive and easily frightened. And I'll probably have to hold my own hand much longer than I want to. I'm an impatient mama.

Ok, enough maudlin hoo-haa. :) Once again, Happy Whatever-You-Celebrate, and Happy New Year, and I'll see you when I can next see you.