Tag: confidence
Stimulating an inferiority complex
I’ve got a friend who likes to highlight his frustrations and sometimes show off a perpetual defeatist attitude: One where he goes into a situation worried and “a wreck” and comes out worse off with no confidence at all. Usually these are either social situations where he’s trying to make inroads with a virtual stranger / romantic interest or job interviews where he feels like he has to sell himself.
Well, he has to do that in both… Or he’s certain of it. Sell who he is and what he stands for and demonstrate it.
In comparison, my worry is attaining these situations. I’m not fearful, going into it, of screwing up a job interview or a social meeting but I know that afterward I will worry that I did just that. Be it a job interview or a date. I don’t sell myself but I try to be myself.
But like I said, it’s attaining these things that worries me. That challenges me. That makes me a wreck and makes me frustrated. I scan over job listings and I see jobs I could do but then there is one, two, three, maybe a few other details that I know I couldn’t handle or things I cannot fill in because I lack those credentials. On dating sites, it’s seeing someone’s image and knowing that’s just what you want and then not getting a reciprocation of interest when you reach out to them. Or worse, “Thanks but no thanks.” Some dating sites are worse because you find out how “compatible” you are with someone and see you are not nearly their ideal… Or lack one or two key intangibles time and again on every single listing you read and requirements of what the other person wants.
You start doubting yourself and everything about yourself. Do you have skills? Absolutely. Do you have talent? Unquestionably. Do you have something to offer in a relationship? Undoubtedly…
…they just don’t seem to apply to anything you are applying for, though.
It feels like there is a phantom job that is out there just for you. There’s a phantom person that is waiting for you to drop into their lives. I’m not even talking about ideals here, but I am talking about something above bottom-of-the-barrel. I’ve been in both jobs and relationships that I ended up feeling were beneath me. The job didn’t make me feel so bad because I was being productive and I gave my all for my paycheck. You don’t get a “paycheck” in a relationship, so to speak, so you better damn well feel productive and happy with who you are with.
But in the hunt for either a job or a relationship, I end up feeling torn down before I even get a chance to make an attempt. That’s a repeatedly poor situation that just keeps popping up.
It tells a tale
It was a couple of years ago that I was wondering just what Michael Stipe was singing about in the R.E.M. classic “Losing my Religion”. For the prudes or the ultra-religious, the title might suggest the song is about a conflict in faith of the Divine. It’s a crisis of faith, indeed, but it’s faith in ones own self and self confidence.
In simplicity, it’s about someone not able to work up the courage to talk to the object of their affection:
Taking a chance
Yesterday I had something happen that hasn’t happened before… Well, it has but I wasn’t confident to the same degree when it happened in the past. I wasn’t compelled to act immediately like I did…
I applied for a job.
Not just a job, but a high profile job.
Not just a high profile job, but one in a different city, in a different region…
Not just a high profile job in a different city, but one that is being offered by a campaign attached to a former presidential candidate.
I really should be more skeptical — and I am in a lot of fashions — towards the job I applied for with John Kerry. It was advertised on Daily Kos and that means hundreds of thousands will not only see this thing but probably apply for a job too.
The thing is… I know this job. I AM this job. I have been doing most of the roles that are described in the online agenda for years on my own. I’ve done them voluntarily, I’ve done them for next to nothing… I know this role, I have confidence I could do this job and do it well.
But in the end, it ain’t up to me now is it? At least not right now.
I’ve never lived away from home for more than a few days. I have been 2300 miles from home without family oir friends around as a social safety net though. While Boston would be like that, it’s much easier to reach my extended family in New York and Connecticut.
What’s gonna happen now? I don’t know… Could I even get up to Boston for an interview? Let alone find myself taking the position? have no clue, but I know one thing — I am that job. I have confidence in that fact and I only wish I had this opportunity more often, closer to home, to prove it.
Confident / Unconfident
Need to spend some time writing on here just for the sake of venting personal thoughts and rambles. I did it in yesterday’s post and I’ll do it again today cuz I’m such a cool guy like that :p.
I’ve got things going for me in certain lights right now — I’m needed somewhere, my skills are being put to use, I’ve got responsibilities and I’m meeting those challenges unlike people seemed to expect me to do. I’ve overcome a lot from my life the last few years — physically — and I know I have more to overcome in the next few.
But alas, I’m at this point where I wonder what the point is? Not because I’m at this depressive state like Marvin from The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s not manic or overpossesive like that. No, it’s more like being lonely and not thinking of myself as good enough to draw the admiration of someone who fits my standards. I keep asking myself where or when I’m going to meet that one and I keep misleading myself about opportunities and possibilities. Simply biding my time on the visions of grandeur with the who-what-where of the moment and not getting any farther than that after all is set and done.
Meaning, if relationships can be represented by a short pile of clothing — I only have a short pile of clothes and every article is either owned by someone else or some wretched, hole-filled piece of trash that no respectable person can wear in public.
Hi, I’m John and I’m a high strung, mop topped, intellegent and insecure, sickly little shit. May I take your order/
I’ve lost a bit of confidence I can make someone happy. I don’t even know what I want any more as-so-much know I’m missing a level of life that seems standard-issue to everyone except me. Somthing I’ve craved since forever and something I’ve only known in a fleeting instance on the Interweb.
I miss what I had in that fleeting instance and fear that’s the only time I’m ever going to experience what I always wanted – knowing someone, loving someone and being true to them. Not being able to live without them. Being destroyed losing them.
Some people say being single is better than being in a relationship. Well, I’m not seeing anyone or being introduced to anyone. Being single sucks. On the other hand, being put into a cage and torn down on a daily basis by your significant other sucks too.
But alas, this vent is over…
Mutter me that….
heh, two for two…
- Right now:: aqui
- Halloween::Eric Draven
- Provider::Resource
- Rescue me::Mo Town
- Confidence::edge
- Fungus::’Shrooms
- Candy corn::sweet
- Reunion::Rejoin
- Winner::vindicated
- Tradition::Pride
Talk
I usually start off my posts with titles — sometimes they come to me immediately and set the tone for posts, sometimes they are terrible titles for posts because they have nothing to do with them, and other times they are dead on. Right now I have no title at all in mind or every title I think of contradicts what I was going to talk about.
I was going over the site web logs – just sometime I do from time to time to see who is linked to Der Stonegauge or other sites I am in control of. I’ve been catching a lot of people who’ve been siphoning graphics lately, for example. I also check those logs for search phrases that are used on the Internet that leads people to this site. Sometimes they are strange terms, sometimes they are relevant because I have posts using those titles, sometimes they are explicitly (because I use 4 letter words in posts and other posts just happen to have the matching second keyword that some pervert typed into a Search Engine) and then some terms come out of the blue.
Here’s the one that made me do a double take:
he doesn’t want to talk to me
It got me thinking… It got me wondering…. Of course, I have no phrase use on the site that even comes close to that, and of course I have no clue who went on the Internet, typed that key-phrase on a certain Search Engine and got this site as a result, but it just jarred me a bit.
So I’ll humor myself here by just typing out why it may seem like “he doesn’t want to talk to me” to this person… And what the truth may be on why “he” seems the way he is.
Read More
After a week
So it’s been seven days since I was discharged from the Hospital. It’s funny I posted about “falling off the internet” last night because I haven’t heard from a lot of people I contacted about being under the weather / in the hospital again. Hmmphf, figures right? Find out who your true friends are…
Blash, tha twas mean spirited but at the same time, it does hold some water.
At any rate, how am I progressing? Am I doing better? Yes. In some lights. I am showing a lot of strength and a lot of other functions that were failing before the operation. On another side of things, my balance seems a little more screwed up. i don’t have the confidence to do certain easy-activities because I feel like I will fall or something like that. Gotta work on it.
Long road in front of me — a long road indeed but I am happy to be journeying down it once again instead of sitting around, feeling like I am in a car always stuck in Neutral.
Hold Me, Thrill me, Kiss me, Kill me
So I forgot to bring up Thursday Night and what I was up to to keep myself busy but not keep my mind off problems entirely…
Michelle and Josh came around. They had both stopped by during my hospital stint and were a refreshing change of pace from the day to day. We just watched some flicks together and had a good time…
…And up until this movie-watching stint, I didn’t know how GAY the opening of Reservoir Dogs is… :tongue
There we are, sitting and watching the flick (Michelle had never seen it) and Tim Roth is going nuts because he’s been shot in the gut and in a lot of pain… Well, Tim and Harvey Keitel share a few intimate moments as Keitel tries to comfort Roth and Tim (Mr. Orange) ends up telling Harvey (Mr. White / “Larry”) to hold him… And Mr. White starts trying to build up Mr. Orange’s confidence and calm him down by combing Mr. Orange’s hair and asking him “Who’s a tough guy.,..” in a rather serene voice…
The entire fucking movie I am cracking jokes about that when Roth is on screen. “Hold me, Larry! Hold me! I’m a tough guy! I’m a tough guy!” There’s that cop who gets his ear cut off (:puke), Roth wakes up after passing out from blood loss and takes out Mr Blonde…
“Hey… Hey you… What’s your name?”
“Marvin… Marvin Nash…”
“Hold me, Marvin! Hold me! Don’t leave me, Marvin!”
I mean, I apologize to Quentin Tarantino and the guys in this movie because I absolutely love Reservoir Dogs and the work of some of these actors (Tim Roth especially)…. But that is the funniest, most closet homosexual shit I have seen. I started cracking jokes about having a Reservoir Dogs drinking game too. “When ever K-BILLY comes on, you take a drink…. Whenever Mr. Orange says ‘Hold me!’ you take a drink… Whenever Joe acts like an asshole, you take a drink… Whenever someone says ‘Dick’ you take a drink…” (that last word alone would have you drunk before the opening credits)…
We ended up watching Southpark later on and of course my entry on Southpark is up — you can read my take on that.…
At any rate, I got a first hand taste of the sick sorta need of having someone special in your life — well, sorta. I started missing what I have had in the past by watching Josh and Michelle together. It made me long tenderness. I haven’t had it in the past, per se, just someone to imagine it with… even that non-physical experience that I have had, I started longing. Living on the concept of emotion between two people is a very tough thing and I guess that’s one place I had faith… Faith in the emotion and pursuing it any way possible until things finally align so that the physical could be pursued. One way street though…
Getting back to the subject of Thursday… Michelle is determined to have another movie night sometime soon and get me to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now, I’ve never been a horror buff but then again – when you’re watching movies with friends, you can watch about anything and enjoy it… :smile
Anecdotes from a hospital-based boytoy
Ah, the journal… Now if only I could start writing like a human being again. I’ve found out that I am typing mistakes more often and using incomplete sentences more often because I’ve been stuck on the T900 pager the last week and keeping things tied into my friends online through that.
There’s so much I can say here and so much I want to say – stuff still going on and stuff that I want to talk about to specific people but the time isn’t right.
My hospital stay started with a bang – well not really, it was more like an “Oh shit!” when I forced myself to look at the clock besides my bed and see that it was 6 Am. I was due at the hospital at 5:45… Crap. I jumped, got dressed and got the hell out of dodge… Didn’t get tied up in traffic and actually got to the Hospital before my scheduled operation time… Not just that, was only a few minutes late going into the OR.
Was it scary? Going under the knife is always scary but it wasn’t scary like last year. There was something still sitting with me that was scarier and I was trying to accept things as moving on because of it. O course, waking up and having a mask put on me again didn’t make me feel comfortable either but then again – blacking out and waking up in post-op was about what I expected next.
Though I did dream. Of what, I don’t recall, but I am certain I dreamt this time I was under. I don’t usually dream. Last time I dreamt anything, it was of green clouds during my first operation.
ANYWAY, I wake up in the Post-op/recovery center and I’m watching the clock, of all things, because I was hoping to catch someone on a TV Talk show at 12:30. Of course it’s around 2 at the time and my priorities are out of whack but then again – I guess this also showed my confidence now. Oh sure, I was in pain, I was in a neck brace, and I had little movement in my legs (Muscle relaxants) but I was ready to start recovery.
I’ll tell more soon, other things take precedence now – like sleep.
