My own worst critic

Maybe it's contributed to my problem with having low self esteem since I was little. But I feel like I'm always super critical of myself and my efforts. I have always found it difficult to accept compliments. Even when I know the person giving it is completely genuine. I always have this niggling shred of doubt in the back of my mind.

Not the "I'm a perfectionist and it wasn't perfect like I think it should be" kind of way. Usually it's the, "I'm really just mediocre and it really wasn't that great but if you say it is, okay" kind of way. And deep down, "I really hope it's true what you're saying" kind of way. Because in certain aspects, I know that I'm not that good at things but I try really hard at it anyway. Like music. Music does not really come naturally to me. Nor do I really have a head for it. But I really love music.

For example, I play the bass clarinet and have loved playing it since the first time I tried it. But I have very little sense of rhythm and certain black dots on give lines scare me. Really. Think if the song, the battle hymn of the republic. I can't look at the rhythm of the song without sweating and having terrible flashbacks to my junior year. I tend to joke that I play the bass clarinet because I can only handle quarter notes and down beats. Seriously, sixteenth notes gives me the urge to hide under my chair (or inside a tuba). And then there's the whole, I can only read the bass cleft if I'm transposing it while playing. I can't tell you off the top of my head what the note is that is written there. But I can finger it on my instrument and tell you what it is for a B flat or.E flat instrument, just not a C instrument. I like playing I'm a group setting, but put me on the spot and I forget to breathe.

Then there's the whole writing thing, which is as little ironic considering I'm writing this blog. I love to write. I probably found my love of writing somewhere between fifth and seventh grade, not that I wrote anything good during that time. That was the whole, "learning to write, but I didn't know what plagiarism was called" period. A little early introduction to what was slightly fan fiction. I still remember fondly the encouragement I received from my seventh grade teacher's aide, who was my hero too. He came to my rescue a couple times when I got bullied by the kids around me. There was one time he noted that I didn't spend the while period writing in my notebook, like I usually did every day. It was one if those classes where the teacher didn't really teach and had absolutely no control over what happened in the classroom and was oblivious to his surroundings. I had forgotten my pens at home that day. Which proved that even from an early age, I am a pen snob.

It is one of my biggest dreams to one day be a writer. It doesn't even have to be a novelist. I'd be happy being some kind of journalist even. I felt so good my eighth grade year that I was in every publication of our monthly school newspaper when I took journalism that year. We had a really big class and not everyone got an assignment every month. And even when I didn't have an assignment, whatever editorial or piece I wrote, ended up in the paper. Only one paper didn't have my name in the byline. But it was something where I wrote it, but it was something that never had a byline every month anyway.

Still now, I go through phases where I fill pages and pages with my writing. Pages that never see the light of day or any one else's eyes. Why? Because I'm too afraid to show them to anyone else. Like I feel like it's not worth showing to anyone else. No one would want to read it. Because I feel like, "It's not good enough. Because I'm not good enough."

And sadly, sometimes that's how I feel about everything I do. Whether it be crocheting a beanie or something as simple as taking a photo. Even writing this blog, I'm like, "no one is reading this anymore so who cares what I say?"

Sorry, sometimes I feel like I am so negative all the time. Then again, the title probably was a warning that this wasn't going to be a peaches and cream entry anyway.