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Week of
4/6/03 I refer to my obsessive thinking patterns quite a lot, but rarely do I look them straight on and discuss them. I think that when I tell people about them, I don’t really express quite strongly enough how they affect me. Most people say, “Yes, I have that, too.” Well, honestly, I don’t think you do. Something has been bothering me for three years. Granted this is not a long time, but I think it is one of those things that will bother me indefinitely, because, to me, it says something very true and very unlikable about myself. Back when I was driving my old black Escort, the Bat Mobile, a few friends and I had driven from somewhere to somewhere else along Dixontown Rd. I was the first car in the train, and was quite a bit ahead of everyone else. When we got to our destination, those who were following me pointed out that I had been driving rather fast. I replied that I had only been going 49mph. They claimed to have been driving at 48mph. I quickly retorted that very often speedometers are wrong, and are purposefully set ahead by manufacturers to avoid lawsuits. Hmmm, yes. Not a very striking incident altogether, but something that I think about at least once a week since the day it happened. Lately, at least once a day. And it makes me feel very uncomfortable with myself and very ashamed. Every day. I have caught myself repeatedly checking the door after I lock it to make sure that it is indeed locked. I’m not talking once or twice. I’ll usually notice on the fourth round, and force myself to walk away, still unsure as to the state of the lock and very, very uneasy about it. Often, it will bother me periodically throughout the day, and I’ll rush home and run to the door so that I can check. If I talk about how difficult it is for to get things done, I am usually referring to the amount of thinking I do about every single action I take, even the pressing of the keys as I type this. It is time-consuming. previous week – top – blog home – discuss – next week Wednesday – “Gratuitous
Linkage” This is something of which I am undoubtedly guilty. There is, however, as they say, “Some method to my madness” (I am also guilty of the gratuitous employment of gimmicky conversational techniques such as those that litter this sentence). I have decided that the one goal I most strongly possess (outside of those pertaining to marriage and other personal matters) is the encouragement of integrated learning and experience. This site is, in more than one way, my first attempt at reaching this goal. I think that the way to rear intelligent, capable humans is to provide them with the opportunity and the tools to learn from and use as many fields and sources of knowledge as possible. Perhaps this is simply the projection of my personal desires into my global philosophy: my interests are literally boundless. I have yet to find any sort of knowledge which does not interest me or does not make me feel more integrated into the world in which I live. Perhaps it is my background in a technology-oriented family that spurred this interest: growing up, I was constantly watching how computers evolved and moved into an endless array of fields. But I see this sort of integration in the arts and humanities as well. My experiences in learning about and using literature have moved from the dogmatic approach of receive-and-regurgitate to applying psychology, sociology, political science, and nearly any other field of knowledge to the understanding and creation of texts. It seems more natural to me, then, to assume that this personal desire is not the latent source of my worldly goal, but that it is the latent product of the world’s movement. So I shall continue to link up various useful and useless websites for the expansion, entertainment, and enrichment of your mind and experience, and mine, as well. I haven’t yet given up my dreams of changing the world, and I hope I never shall. previous week – top – blog home – discuss – next week Something I have craved for several years is a writing tutor: someone to act as a mentor and guide to me in regard to my writing. I could never reasonably ask someone to take on this responsibility, and so I assumed it was a desire that would need to go unfulfilled. I think in many ways this has stunted my growth as a writer. I have nearly given up writing at so many points in my life that the small amount of writing I have done in my twenty years amazes me. Proper guidance, encouragement, and feedback are things that I thought were essential to the development of writing craft, and in many ways they are. But this is reflective of a larger emotional problem that I face. I constantly desire and seek out validation and motivation from extrinsic sources. So much of my self-image depends on validation from other people. I suppose that my desire to “be productive” has a lot to do with that, but perhaps that is itself a problem. More, though, I think it stems from my own inability to make clear judgments. My perfectionism, obsessive-ness, and anxiety make it extremely difficult for me to distinguish genuine appraisal. I am afraid to deem something horrible, because that probably stems from perfectionism, but I am equally afraid to deem something good or valuable because it is just as likely that I am attempting to escape the obsessive anxiety by doing so, then quickly looking away. This website is a prime example: I truly feel that I am attempting to create a positive and productive forum for artists, but the lack of immediate response makes me doubt its value tremendously. I want to overcome this fear of failure, even imagined ridicule, but I want to do it without checking my progress constantly with everyone I know. It’s so difficult to not IM everyone online as soon as I update and ask them what they think of every slight change. It’s tempting even to ask advice here, but I won’t. This project is a lot of things to me; one of its most important functions is being an experience in self-exploration and maturation. I am attempting to realize a lot of goals, and I’ve got to learn to do that without exterior validation. previous week – top – blog home – discuss – next week |
All original material © 2003 Erika Salomon.
