One of the greatest challenges is my habit of being less than compassionate and forgiving with myself. I don't know when this began, exactly. It may have always been there. I do know that it's directly related to the abuse I experienced as a child, but that's no excuse. I'm nearly 60 years old. Grow the feck up.
Of course, this self-abuse spills over into other parts of my life. One of the more visceral points of evidence is that I bite my nails, which I've begun to work with. Again. But on the internal (and more destructive) level, I tend to believe that I'm really not very talented and that people are bound to find out that I'm just a no-talent slug with visions of adequacy. That, too, must stop. It's a little harder than simply popping a piece of gum in my mouth when I feel the urge to consume myself, however. Still, I fully understand how one begets the other.
Over the holidays I had the chance to read a book that's similar to mine in that it is a modern fiction in a musical setting. Now, I don't like to compare in this manner, but it made me look at my own writing in a much better light. "Hey, my stuff's not so bad!" You know what I mean. I was able to open up that Word doc and read the recent additions to the second book of my trilogy and really like it. I could believe that it's worthy of print and that other people will like it as well.
It seems to me, to really know who we are and what we believe, we must first like who we are and what we believe. That done, we can move on and create the life we wish to live. We can make miracles happen. But the first step (for me, anyway) is to turn off the "Little Inquisitioner" that's constantly undermining that self-acceptance, self-affirmation, and self-empowerment.
In my case, he needs to be defrocked and executed.
