Dear penpal: I’m doubting again, like usual

Dear penpal,

I am in DOUBT.

I’ve had my camera for precisely three days and I am in doubt. I’m not good enough. What if I’ll never be good enough? What if this is too complicated for me? What if I just wasted eight hundred dollars? What if I am DOOMED to SUCK??

It’s been three days and I’ve been practically consumed. I know this is internalized cultural whatsit and that it will pass and that I will learn and that I don’t suck. But I still doubt myself. It’s a hard habit to break.

I took a picture of the chives and a water droplet and I suddenly feel like that is a very silly thing to take a picture of. AGH! DOUBT!

Seriously, this happens every time I try something new. Want to write a novel? TOO HARD. YOU’LL NEVER DO IT. NaNoWriMo DOESN’T COUNT! (Oh yes it does!) Want to run a half-marathon next February? TOO HARD. YOU’RE TOO LAZY TO EVER SUCCEED. Want to get dressed in the morning? YOU SUCK AT COLORS.

It’s ridiculous and arbitrary and… and… it needs to stop. TOO HARD! I’m addicted to negativity. It’s a SLIPPERY SLOPE on this DOWNWARD SPIRAL.

I just have to work through this. Then I’ll get to the stage where I feel less useless and can actually learn something; and then I’ll get to that nice stage where I’m learning SO MUCH SO FAST SO FUN; and then I’ll get to the stage where I can actually feel a little comfortable being competent.

We can do this.

Now I’m doubting my ability to end a letter,
Molly

Dear penpal: Considering Why

Dear penpal,

I think people get the wrong idea about me. Something about me just exudes, “I LIKE PEOPLE!” but it’s entirely false. I don’t like people. People annoy me. I want to be one of those angsty haters like Janis Ian from Mean Girls, but I just don’t have enough angst to pull it off.

I talked to my manager about moving from selling to support (pricing, merchandising, etc.). “Why??” Everyone I talk to says, “Why??” And then I get, “But you’re so good! You don’t like customers? Why??” Which is basically the story of my life.

“I’m homeschooled.”
“Why??”

“I want to be a farmer.”
“Why??”

“I’d rather do all these other, non-glorious things.”
“Why??”

Apparently I present myself as too much of a fashionista, too much of a people-person, too much of a city girl. I don’t dress like a farmer (most days). I seek out social interaction, although I don’t ever say much. I’m a great listener, and occasionally I’ll offer a bit of commentary in between head nods. (Does that count as socializing?) And yeah, I work at the shiniest department store there is, telling women they look ‘fantastic!’ I catch myself using the word fantastic all the time lately, and I want to bite myself. I CAN FEEL THE FAKENESS INVADING MY BRAIN.

But really, to be on the subject here, I am an introvert. I had a little wondering phase back in November-December when I thought I might actually like talking to people, but it passed. Thank goodness. Being an extrovert must be EXHAUSTING. I’d much rather talk to myself, thankyouverymuch.

Maybe it’s just hard for extroverts to imagine people who aren’t inherently like them. Our society does encourage extroverts, after all. I read that somewhere. It might be a book. Maybe that’s why I keep getting asked Why. Come to think of it, my choices usually don’t seem to faze the introverts…

Oh the things to think about.

“Keep it real,” or whatever,
Molly

p.s. HAVE A FANTASTIC DAY.

Dear penpal: I want a camera so I can be cool

[I've finally realized after about three years of failing to blog consistently that I just don't like blogging all that much. It's funny, because I love writing and I love finding online community. So I'm experimenting here. I've always wanted a pen pal, but they're hard to find and harder to keep. I'm thinking if I change my tone from "serious blogger" to "letter to a friend," I'll have more success and more fun with it. Plus I get to write whatever I want. #winning]

Dear penpal,

I’m thinking about buying a camera. I’ve wanted a halfway decent camera for quite some many years, but you know how bad I am about saving money. It’s easier now that I have a savings account and I automatically deposit a portion of each paycheck there, but I still SEE it every time I log in to my bank. I’m terrible at hiding anything from myself that is moveable. I’m one of those people who set their car clocks 10 minutes ahead in order to actually arrive on time, but always calculate the time subtracting those 10 minutes. I can’t forget.

But anyway, I digress. (I’ve never been entirely sure what ‘digress’ means. It’s one of those words that I use but can’t define. Like most of the words I use. This is what happens when you read so much as a child.) (Also you start quoting your favorite books and giggle at seemingly random occurrences.) (I digress!)

I’VE DECIDED THAT why should I buy only a halfway decent camera? Why not buy a respectable camera? The price tag is SHOCKING, but I can justify it if I put it in context. It’s a month of rent. It’s a plane ticket to somewhere exotic and back. It’s the cost of an online digital photography class at the community college. It lasts longer than any of these.

Plus if I buy it at National Camera Exchange I get some free classes. SCORE.

I see this as an investment. Besides, then I can send you pictures of my world. And I can replace the default generic stock photo header that came with my new blog theme. (Not sure what’s going on up there. Why isn’t the path to the bridge paved? WHY IS THERE A BRIDGE? Why is that tree so prominent and yet out so of focus?? It grates.)

So what sparked this, you ask? I dunno. I’m sick of trying to make prettiness with my CRAPPY CRAPPY hand-me-down-twice camera. It’s pink. I want to barf every time I touch it. Also, it freaks out every time it sees light. As in, any kind of light. Are we in a well-light room? FREAK OUT! Is that natural sunlight? FREAK OUT! Did I just auto-flash myself? OMG FREAK OUT!!!

I’m an artist no matter how hard I try to deny it. It’s about time I put down the Crayolas and start using some real tools.

Also I want a portfolio. Cool people have portfolios, and I want to be one of THEM. I think humans naturally have this lifelong desire to be cooler than we are, regardless of how cool we are perceived. This is why celebrities have self-esteem issues, and people who seem like they truly don’t care are SO DANG COOL.

Dear penpal, I think you’re cool.

Thanks for listening,
Molly

Crapft love

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of CRAPFTS. They’re like CRAFT FAILS, but without the good intentions. It’s a way to admit that I’m not a good artist, in fact I suck, but I’m going to keep playing around anyway.

I love crapfts. I love that they let me be creative and simultaneously suck, and I don’t have to care! It’s liberating. I have no art teachers looking over my shoulder, no grades to worry about, no reason to try to be perfect. It’s so much more fun.

In the words of Maureen Johnson (@maureenjohnson), who makes all this stuff up, “A CRAPFT is a craft which is crap. The ideal crapft has been made with true, blind, joyous incompetence. Haste, confusion, lack of proper tools . . . these are all the makings of a great crapft.” She has an excellent Crapftshow on her blog.

Seriously, who has more fun? Real crafts are not nearly this amusing!

I encourage everyone to make crapfts. GO FORTH AND BE CRAPTFY. Suck at something. Flaunt it in the faces of your predecessors. It takes a lot of guts to risk failure after a lifetime of being taught that failing is wrong. But it takes a lot of failure to be good! How can we learn if we never fail?

Edison is the king of this: “I’ve not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Can we get a motivational poster over here?

Every day I find more ways to not write, to not talk to strangers, to not approach problems. Thousands of ways to fail that I won’t have to try again.

Probably it’s fitting that today’s crapft is to showcase my most important project of late, DON’T BREAK THE CHAIN. It’s where I write something really crappy every day in hopes that someday I’ll be done spewing crap and actually write something decent. It’s a celebration of failures. I’ll probably blog about it later this week.

Seriously, I’m obsessed with that grass paper. It’s a tragedy that I’ve used it all up.

Sick of “somedays”, I made an action plan

I must admit, I’m easily inspired.

Some things are fleeting – “Ooh I love that dress! I should make it myself!” – while others are lasting – brilliant but simple ideas that I can’t stop thinking about.

Jessica Barker is one of those bloggers that don’t just inspire ideas, but action as well. Her latest post on Perseverance was just the shove I needed to actually get something done about it.

I’m great at dreaming. I’m good at making someday goals. I’m terrible about following through.

So I made an action plan. It’s called “PLAN OF ACTION.” I know, right? I am implementing it on May 1st.

In order to put in place PLAN OF ACTION, I had to come up with some lists. The areas I want to work on (Gardening, Farming, Writing, Creating, Website/Blog). Long-term goals and when I want them accomplished. Short-term steps to take to get those goals accomplished. Deadlines. Crayons.

I’ve got the month of April divided up into weekly tasks and deadlines. I need to plan ahead, because I suck at keeping on track of things that happen sometime in the future. I mastered the art of procrastination sometime around age 8, and I have yet to recover.

Isn’t it pretty? Don’t question the bird. Or the grass cloud. I have no reasonable explanation.

My tasks are simple: Remember to plant the peas. Contact the city clerk about the legality of a farm stand in my front yard. Blog two times a week. Work on my novel’s outline so I can get it to readability status by October 31st (before NaNoWriMo). Renew library books. Redesign blog. CLEAN THE PORCH so I can move all my writing/crafting/doing stuff in there and get some sunshine and silence while I work.

Let it be known that I am HOLDING MYSELF ACCOUNTABLE.

I hate matching

I hate matching. I hate it. I’ve hated it all my life. I was colorblocking as a child, before it was cool (again), because I couldn’t bring myself to wear the orange shirt with the orange shorts, even though they clearly were a set. The hot pink shirt just seemed to express me better.

Getting dressed today I threw my outfit on my bed, next to/on top of the little piles of clothes that I was meaning to put away. My navy button-up shirt with the periwinkle, white, and purple floral pattern fell next to the purple t-shirt.

“What a perfect match!” I exclaimed. I promptly threw up in my mouth.

I can do it for other people, like those old ladies that come into Macy’s and “like to buy a complete outfit,” all the way down to their shade of lipstick. But matching my own clothes makes me want to barf.

If I were a better blogger, I would tie my theme into a broader message, make it bold in all the right places. Sometimes we don’t always need to match, I’d say. Or maybe, Sometimes matching is a good thing. But I really don’t have anywhere to go with this matching thing. I don’t have a thesis to match.

I figure right now is the time for output over perfection. The more failures I accrue while writing, the better chance I have of success.

Bear with me.

Open the door to dreams

We all hate the dream-assigners. You should be a doctor/lawyer/accountant/executive. You should go to my alma mater, you’d love it there. Just wait until you have kids. You should meet my nephew/friend’s son/chiropractor; he’s handsome and single and the two of you would be so cute together.

The intentions are always good. We’ve been programmed to tell kids to want to be doctors/lawyers/accountants/executives because those are great professions, and we need people to do those things. And we talk about college like Jehovah’s Witnesses going door-to-door (although generally better received). It’s who we are, it’s what we do. We just want to see the people we care about happy.

We forget what it’s like to be on the receiving end.

What if I don’t want to be a lawyer, I don’t want to go to the U, I don’t want to date your nephew, I don’t want to convert to your religion? I can only take so much preaching before I shut the door.

Lately I’ve been having trouble with someone assigning fashion design as my dream. I don’t know what I’ve done to perpetuate this – I repeatedly tell her that I’m not interested in going to college for anything, let alone fashion design. I hardly draw; I sew even less. Sure I work at Macy’s, but I don’t follow any trends that we don’t carry at my store. The only thing I’ve got going for me is that I like wearing clothes.

I like wearing clothes. I like wearing bright clothes, and flattering clothes, and sometimes even trendy clothes. I like combining clothes into unexpected but tasteful outfits. I like shopping for those few pieces that I can’t dress without. I can see the connection, but it’s fundamentally wrong for me. I’m a curator, not a creator.

I’m not interested in fashion design any more than the average shopper is interested in fashion design. It’s something that other people do, just like driving buses and performing surgeries and running for president are things that other people do. It’s a valid dream, and a very good dream, but it’s not mine.

I want to be a farmer. Farming is not a very desirable career for someone so intelligent as I, or so creative, or so fashionable, or so spunky. Farming is not a very desirable career. I realize this. I’m so talented that I could be a primatologist or a movie score composer or newspaper journalist or even a doctor. I realize this too.

But farming is my dream. It kills me to walk the streets of the suburbs when I could be walking my fields. It kills me every time I look at my sad garden in a shady corner of the yard, the only spot I could claim because maintaining grass greener than the neighbor’s is a better priority. It kills me to live here, and to live like this. I don’t just desire land, I need it and I need it now, not in forty years when I have a successful career in my fallback job. Do you realize this?

I need work that I love, and that is not something that can be assigned to me. There’s a broader issue here that has nothing to do with fashion or farming or careers or college. It has to do with authority, with boundaries, with trust and with faith. Adults should not have any say in what a teenager dreams of doing, or of whom they wish to become. The job of a mentor is encourage, to enlighten, and to support – but never to determine. Open a new door, but please don’t close all the others. Have a little faith in our dreams.