alright!

i'm sorry! i have been well and roundly castigated for being delinquent on an update. well, if i'm not writing, i haven't anything to say, so deal with it. truth be told, it really has been a head-down, nose-to-the-grindstone sort of week. after my vanishing act last week, there was an understandably large pile of work out from under which i had to dig, and that has taken much of my focus and energy. mercifully, all this happened right before a major holiday for which the nation slows to a crawl, and seemingly my business is as affected as most others which has allowed me to catch up. on the truly weird side of things, i actually produced a quote yesterday that totaled out at more than $109 million. does this sound like a sum for which i should be responsible to anyone?

which brings me to a bit of a revelation i had yesterday. i was talking to one of my great friends, and she and i were musing on our respective astounding abilities to hold onto a low self-opinion even in the face of mountains of reinforcement. she had her thing that she had just plain rocked and for which she had been rightly praised, and i was struck be the similarity of her reaction to my own. in the last couple of months i have gotten a new job and then been trusted with major, global level accounts due to some of my skills and tendencies that line up well with that, and yet i still feel like i'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, looking around at everyone around me and feeling that i really have the wool pulled over their eyes. and in the middle of expressing this thought i occurred to me - this is a rather sizable indictment of everyone around me, is it not? if i'm as simple and as incompetent as i think i am, what does that opinion say about the people who have evaluated my performance and ability and judged me to be not only worth of employment but of trust with our largest and most complex accounts? and this is to say nothing of the people who truly support me every day and feel i'm worthy of their love and compassion and friendship. so either i am surrounded by morons (a possibility one should never discount, mind you), or i am way better at what i do and at being who i am than i believe myself to be, which all sounds very self-help but i even have trouble escaping the logic in it.

but don't you worry, faithful reader - even should i manage to climb via this logical fire escape to the solid ground in the alley of reasonable self-opinion, the fires of other emotional issues will still burn brightly within my walls, waiting only to take down a handful of bricks to expose themselves to the oxygen-rich atmosphere that is this blog. i am a veritable burgeoning towering inferno of self-loathing and emotional turmoil, and i simply need time and a little more digging before another sore festers to the point where you can read about it.

and now we have come to the less-entertaining portion of today's post. i had massive reservations about posting all of this so publicly, and there were others who bore equal and even stronger concerns than my own, but i have never been so happy to have done something for myself. this blog has been a boon to my own creative impulse, as i find that truly enjoy writing it. but more importantly, the others in my life who have either themselves fought these same demons or have watched loved ones fight them are coming out of the woodwork, and the love and support and pats on the back and hugs (where i've been comfortable with them, and thank you to everyone who asks first!) have been flowing in a river the depth and breadth of which i would never have guessed. i have obviously touched more lives than i'd have thought, and that is a good thing to know and to feel. and it is both comforting and alarming to know that not only am i not alone in this struggle, not only am i not a rarity, but this is dangerously close to being a common ailment (though admittedly, most manage not to end up incarcerated!), which is a pretty harsh indictment of our modern world and the society we have built for ourselves, in my opinion. but that is a rant that will have to wait for another day.