Mistakes

Well folks. Time for my second post. I wanted to talk about something I have had running around in my head since the beginning of the year. Basically, the beginning of the year began for me with very little of a bang. I wasn't in the greatest of moods for reasons I won't fully disclose. The first week of the year was pretty rough. Trying to get back into the swing of things after a week of vacation isn’t easy in the first place but, my mind was going a 100 fucking miles and hour and when my head starts doing that there is no way possible for me to shut it off. And of course none of these thoughts were the lovely I'm so terrific thoughts. But, more of along the lines of why are you so much of a fuck up type. Why don't you do this, why aren't you this, how come you haven’t become this or that. Just your general self-doubt, depreciating, destruction of self-confidence bullshit that I'm so damn good at. So anyways, I spent the start of 07' wondering what was wrong with me. After a week or so of all this useless contemplation. Something hit me. I think I was at work but, it isn't really that important. I realized that I hate being wrong. I beat myself up mercilessly if I ever perform anything resembling a mistake. My own worse critic. I distinctly remember a teacher I think in middle school telling me I would make a great general and that she would follow me into battle because she knew I would have everything planned out and would meticulous with any battle planning. So yeah, in a sense this hatred of fucking shit up is probably a good trait to have. But, I've noticed that it keeps me from doing things. It cripples me this fear of failure holds me back and probably leads directly to more failures through lack of action. I procrastinate because if I can't do something perfectly right I'd rather wait then learn as I go.

Then another epiphany slammed into me as I was driving home from work one day. If you follow this idea of fear of mistakes to its conclusion. You have to ask the question why are you afraid of failure? And ladies and gentlemen the answer to that question sucked. Cause it dawned on me mistakes are only mistakes because you didn't live up to someone else’s idea of what is right. Translation, I care more about what others think of me than I do about trying to improve myself and become a better person. Life is fucked up. The only way to grow is through mistakes, failures, pain, and sacrifice. That’s the only way. And when you allow someone’s opinion of you get in the way of these things that will make you grow. You become a smaller person because of it. And this is what I had done. And it pissed me off. I think I had lied to myself for so long saying I don't care what others think of me. And in reality my perception of what people thought of me was more important than who I really was. Now I'll be honest I'm not really sure we can go through life completely without ever caring what others think of us. In some ways we are always living up to expectation set on us by others. Whether it be your fathers, mothers, wife’s, kids, great aunt, bosses. It doesn't matter it is tough to be distinctly yourself in a world that is so connected. "A man is not an island" after all. But, if we realize that maybe just maybe then the important choices, those big steps in life we can start throwing away misconceptions of what we should do. And instead focus intuitively on what it right for us. Whether everyone else think it is a mistake or not. Even if it is there will be a nice lesson at the end of it for us. Well I wanted to get that out sort of as an affirmation as to the direction I want to take in my life. Through caution to the wind sort of thing. I've started asking myself the question every time I have hesitation about doing something. Is that a mistake? And somehow this helps with my clarity. It helps me see whether I'm doing or not doing something because I think it is wrong. Or because I afraid I'll do something someone else thinks is wrong. Fuck it. Right?