Morning pages from The Artist’s Way is about getting everything out on the page that’s on the mind and not looking back. I have done that in various ways, but never liked it because it simply was the morning. But then, when I did things at Kenyon with Grace just to heave everything onto the page. To write it out. So that I could actually focus on what I wanted to write. It suddenly made a difference. Or did it? Possibly. Because of course with anything much more at stake, more important (to me), I need to get those unhappy thoughts out before I can focus. How can I focus if I don’t process? And the way I process is by writing it down.
For the last day, I have suddenly been haunted by all those comments. Those comments from that job that have made me feel inadequate and undeserving. I hate the words imposter syndrome now, because what if it’s true? It is obviously true I had told myself for the last several years. Even as I continue ahead pulling apart the roles that I previously believed were mine.
And yet those words, said in such a kind manner that I wish that they were meaner, pointing out my inabilities—this is wrong, this is also wrong. And they watch me real-time try to improve something. And then it’s awful. All that inability to coach well means that I wasn’t coachable. And they use it as an example that I showed evidence that I wasn’t good enough.
Am I too old to improve?
How could they make me feel this way?
But when I am faced with something similar, I see that I am failing. And then I allow myself to fail even worse. In the most tragic way. Because unlike others, when I fall, I really fall. Get up, they say, but I am hurt, I am hurt, I say. Maybe they lend a hand, but maybe they can’t lend a hand, because they aren’t supposed to do that. They tell me to push this way and that way to get up. But I don’t understand. I don’t understand what they’re saying—what are they saying about the physics, what are they saying about the limbs on my body to push myself up? And then in doing so, maybe my body goes slack and everything I try, I injure myself more. And it’s worse than before. I have lost all the skills from before. And it’s like I have become even worthless.
But the thing is, if you leave me alone, the pressure goes away. I never trusted them anyway, so I couldn’t do it in the presence of them. I concoct, I imagine the people that I trust, that I know will support me, they know me so well that they will push me up. They know what works. And then I find my way.