Monday, December 6, 2010

I Have a Problem

Allie Brosh is the person who made me want to start a blog.  I never intended to do anything in the vein of her work, but she made me want to explore my own voice.

Her blog touched me because we share a similar problem.  But where I go to great lengths to hide mine and never let anyone notice, she brings it out, tells everyone to take a great big look, and makes it hilarious.  I don't know if this is a natural, easy thing for her, but for me it would be terrifying.

I'm not perfect.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that I am deeply flawed... in many ways.  I know that anyone reading this must see this as a statement of blatant fact on par with announcing that the sky is blue, or that bitches be crazy.  I have always known that it is natural for people to be flawed, but for me I always considered it to be a temporary condition.  Given enough time I would identify all of my problems and fix them.  I've had a list for many years of the things that were wrong with me.  I've been working solidly to cross things off of that list.  Self improvement has become a way of life.  I've recently come to understand that it's also become an obsession.

Somewhere along the line I became convinced of my own worthlessness.  Since then I have been doing everything I can increase my own perceived value.  It's been pretty slow going overall, as this has all been subconscious, but its been happening.  I evaluate my own traits and judge them as either positive, negative, or irrelevant.  I've polarized my view of myself, and I'm only happy if I'm making what I consider to be significant progress.  Which brings me to my worst problem:

I'm a procrastinator.  Like bad.  There are things I will put off for no good reason, things that I need to do or I will suffer dire consequences.  I've never understood why I do that, but I think I have a clue now.  Whenever it happens I have already made a mistake, or at least what I consider to be one.  If I proceed, someone will see it, and I can scarcely bear calling attention to my flaws.

I don't know how people live with their flaws and do nothing to try to improve them.  If you're not happy with who you are, you should do everything you can to improve yourself.  That's what I've been saying to myself.  I've said it a lot.  Many times a day.  It never even occurred to me that I would never run out of problems; That one day I would just have to make a conscious decision that I was good enough, in spite of any remaining flaws.  Maybe it's not even about that, right?  Maybe I'm not a list of talents and flaws.  Maybe I'm a collection of traits.  Maybe I'm already good enough.

...

Or maybe I just need to learn more ukulele songs.  Clearly that will make me a better man!

 

3 comments:

'Reta said...

I'm so glad you finally posted this here, I was wondering when it would show up. Love it!!

Jenny said...

I want to comment on how much I love your writings, but I feel like it would take away from this post instead of contributing to it. So I'll just keep it simple: I like this post very, very much. :)

Adam Jones said...

'Reta - I'm not really sure if you're meaning the video, or my confession of crippling addiction. I suspect it is somehow both.

Jenny - Never be afraid to tell me how much you love what I do, but thank you. Thank you.

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