Catch-22

I have this tendency of setting the bar very high for myself. The problem with being so single-minded and goal-driven is the very real danger of developing tunnel vision, the symptoms of which I'm now wiser at recognizing as a warning bell of worst to come should they be allowed to fester.

Sometimes I find myself so terrified at falling short of expectations, real or perceived, that I freeze up and allow myself to be consumed by the black tendrils of doubt. There are times too when I mercilessly dawdle on past episodes and pick on my naivete and lack of finesse till I'm black and blue within.

Someone once said to me, "You're quick to make excuses for others and overlook their shortcomings, but you're so hard on yourself." Maybe. I stopped blogging for a bit and quietly removed all links leading here from Facebook and Twitter one evening after re-reading my previous posts.

To say I was appalled at some of the typos and grammatical errors I had made would be an understatement. What's more, I felt many of my posts had no real value to anyone else but me, as a chronicle of my (oft painfully awkward) journey growing up.

Writing isn't just my passion and therapy - it's my bread and butter. Editorial work for a magazine, which pays my bills and keeps me from being a starving wordsmith, feels very much like a dream job at the moment. So perhaps you're able to imagine my terror at someone googling my name, finding this blog, and using it to judge my skill as a writer.

I love the joy in stringing words together and making sense of them as a whole, but I do have to work hard at it. I'm doing it professionally 5 days a week for most of the day, that when I get home and blog I just want to express a certain thought or feeling without overthinking it. I do very little self-editing here and most of what I choose to publish is done at the spur of the moment. My inner critic squirmed nevertheless and I promptly pulled the plug.

But I miss blogging on the fly and sharing random bits and bobs I come across on my exploratory tracks through the net. We'll see how this goes.