Keep learning. It'd be really boring if you knew all the answers already.

I just typed 'failure' in the title line, but I deleted it and changed my mind.

I made a mistake at work today - I got facts wrong in a story, and this has caused anxiety to some local residents. (This last is what is upsetting me the most, as well as my own total inability to deal with mistakes and my tendency to beat myself up).

I'm trying to not handle this situation the way I usually have in the past, and to deal with it in an adult, effective, productive, constructive way. Hence deleting 'failure' - the way my mind works, that will only serve to keep me dwelling on it.

I have to say, it is disheartening that every time I'm cruising towards increasing my confidence in myself or my abilities, something like this happens. (Maybe I am sabotaging it myself somehow? Hmm.)

I don't have a lot of confidence, and I've always struggled with being complacent - fearing that if I become complacent, or start taking things for granted, I will be punished, or will lose those things. I confuse complacence with confidence - I am trying so hard not to have the former that I destroy any chance I have of gaining the latter.

It just seems ironic that every time I start to relax a little (this time at work) 'something bad happens.' Maybe I need to look more closely at that.

I definitely need to chill when it comes to my job. I am very guilty of letting it define me - allowing my career successes and failures to define who I am. Living to work instead of working to live.

Wow, I'm a nightmare. I get annoyed at myself!

Just trying to process some of this stuff through...thank goodness no one actually reads this. ;-)

I don't have kids, I get lonely sometimes - I guess that's why I value my job so much. That, and my inherited west coast Scottish Protestant work ethic.

Anyone else, I'd be able to reassure them. Myself, I can't forgive so easily.

Do I forgive others' mistakes easily though? I need to look at that too. Maybe this is what I can learn from this mistake.

I am desperately missing a spiritual dimension to my life at the moment, I just can't seem to find the right path. Do I need a specific path? Society tells me that yes, I do. I can't quite smother the sound of that voice yet.

...

OK, after gazing out of the window for a bit, at the most beautiful pink sky (I don't have the camera handy, or I'd attempt a pic) I have managed to replace the dot that was the original title of this blog to something a little more optimistic. Something that when I look on this tomorrow and prepare to cringe at yet another session of narrow-focus navel gazing, will hopefully inspire me just a wee bit to get over myself.

Now, THAT should be the title - get over yourself! :-)

blue sky thinking

Blue sky thinking, one of those phrases that earns you a prize if you're playing "corporate-speak bingo."

And not something that applies to my thoughts today, no matter how hard I tried. (But hey, the picture's quite good, so I was trying to find a way to include it.)

I was trying to do some personal 'blue sky thinking' today...trying to think outside the box that is my head, trying to figure some stuff out.

All I think I really managed to do was depress myself, a little - not so much blue sky as just blues.

In a nutshell, I just feel so lonely...and that's really hard for me to admit, for all sorts of reasons. I feel shame at being lonely - I figure there must be something wrong with me because I am not popular. People make judgements about you based on how many friends you have. If you don't have many, then you don't seem to attract any more.

The words that my mother used so, so many times in my childhood are like a bell tolling. The sound echoes from my past, reverberates into my present, and I fear the vibrations are shaping my future, too.

I want to try to process this through. She used to say to me, when I'd done something wrong (I need to take some time at some point to identify what kind of things): "You're so horrible - if you don't watch out, when you grow up, you'll be a lonely old woman with no friends."

I feel lonely, so I feel I must be horrible, because I have fulfilled my mother's prophecy. And I can see how I have potentially created a self-fulfilling prophecy there; I just feel pretty helpless when it comes to changing it.

I don't know how to change it. Crap women's magazines tell you: "Join clubs! If you meet someone interesting, invite them for coffee! Listen and ask questions! Treat people as you want to be treated! Be friendly - smile! People will respond to your outreach!"

I'm sorry, but they don't. People go to clubs with existing sets of friends. If you invite random strangers for coffee, they think you're a weirdo with no friends. Asking questions can backfire - people think you're nosy. Listening - well, I have this one down pat, and all that happens is you get overloaded with information and become a kind of emotional dump. Treat as you want to be treated - I try - but it just never seems to come back; I'm despondent. Smile - well, OK, I haven't given up on that one, but I do suspect people think I'm mental.

OK, the above makes me sound bitter, or like I've given up, or like I know it all. I don't think any of those are true, but I am just a little despondent. I am the first to admit I know my social skills aren't great, due to shyness and fear; but I just need a wee bit of encouragement at the moment, a wee boost.

I am just desperately lonely and it makes me feel sad, sometimes.

Yet at the same time I am surrounded by people. Casual acquaintances, work contacts; things could be a lot worse. I just crave that deeper connection - it would be so good to have that just now. I am starving for connection. (And I am guessing that typing all this out, in this fashion, isn't going to make me sound like an attractive prospect! Argh. Note to self: try to do a selling-self type blog soon...)

I was scribbling random thoughts today, in my "think outside the box" session on the train, and my first note was: "things are not always what they seem."

This works both ways - and I need to remember that it doesn't always mean that the actual reality is worse than the surface appearance; sometimes the hidden truth is better.

I think I need to really look, and want to see, things very carefully before I can see what they really, truly are.

By the same token I need to think about, and look at, quite carefully, what I say to the world - and what reality I am hiding.

That's about as far as I got. It became a little depressing and I admit I got a wee bit stuck on "lonely". I need to try to remember that I'm not at the mercy of lonely. There is more thinking to be done, some of those random scribble thoughts need expansion and consideration (something to look forward to, readers... ).

So, back to the blue sky thinking - yes, I got blue, but I need to look at that picture above and remember that the clouds dissipate eventually and the sun comes back out. The blue is behind the clouds...so if I'm already at blue, that's got to be good?