I haven’t been around for a couple of days. I’ll be the first to admit that some of it’s due to procrastination (though somewhere in my building, there’s a person who practices piano for hours at a time. I’ve heard the improvement, and every time I hear the ivories, I think it’s time for me to get to work as well). However, I’d started the “Get Unstuck” issue, thinking it would help me with my LO Dilemma, and it’s not really what I’m looking for. That issue was something I needed several months ago, before I quit my job that wasn’t working for me. It wasn’t the “stuck” I feel.
So I’m skipping the rest of that issue for now and trying self-esteem (March 2001). I know I’ve hit the jackpot–Oprah’s “Here We Go” column nails some of my issues right on the head: “Over the course of thousands of interviews through the years, I have come to understand a predominant theme in human encounters: We are all seeking validation.” And that’s totally true in my case. One reason I love writing is that I can look to a pile of diaries or blog entries or articles and say, “Look what I’ve been able to do. See? It’s written down–some of it’s published. It’s important (and so am I).”
But as Oprah continues in her column, that shouldn’t matter–I shouldn’t care about what the rest of the world thinks about me. I’m good enough because I am.
That’s going to take some time to sink in. It’s easy (and sometimes fun) to compare myself to others, particularly when I don’t know the other person’s full story and can just make a lot of assumptions, therefore making myself feel even worse. It’s also easy to wallow in rejection–especially in my field. I’ll apply for a writing job or pitch an idea, and I obsess over getting the approval, getting the editor to like me. After a few days, that kind of goes away, and I stop obsessing over said opportunity (and this runs the gamut from checking my e-mail all the time to constantly visiting websites to see if something of mine’s been published to thinking about it nonstop and having full on conversations with editors who aren’t there). Why? Mostly because I don’t have the time to be so obsessed, but also because it’s tiring.
Now that I’ve known about the Living Oprah site for a couple of weeks, I’ve slowly become less obsessed with the idea that her project is killing mine. Has my dilemma totally disappeared? No, because I still have the same underlying problems that caused it in the first place. I don’t give myself enough credit and believe in (and put time toward) my own project. Self-sabotage? Maybe, but I’m pulling myself out of my funk and moving on. Hopefully, this self-esteem issue will allow me to move on sooner than I have in the past (and in this case).
