magistrate

I spent most of last week feeling like crap either physically or emotionally. (Or both. It was sometimes both.) Along with a persistent low-grade fever, I got hit with a case of I'm not doing anything with my life, I'm not going anywhere with my life, I will never amount to anything and I'm never going to mean more than I mean right now. Which is silly, and which I know is silly, because for where I am in my life I'm doing just fine – I've got a college degree, I've got a few publications, I've got a salaried job, and these are not small accomplishments. Which prompted some introspection on my part, and while this was originally going to be a much longer post rambling my way through that thought process, I don't have the focus to write it all out right now, so I'll just hit the highlights:

* I keep thinking that if I just do this or do that, I'll feel a lot better about myself, which isn't, so far as I can tell, true. I mean, when I was 19 I thought that being a Published Author!! would grant me some sort of inner sense of validity, which isn't really true; now that I've got fiction appearing here and there in magazines, what I'm really wondering is why it's not appearing in more. And why all of it is short-form. Honestly, I don't think that finishing a novel or sending it out or seeing it on bookshelves is going to be anything revelatory, either, if I manage it; there's still Ways Up to go.

* Phrased another way, the above can be succinctly summarized as if I just HAVE MORE accolades, I bet I'll be a happier person! I think this is about as useful as buying a new sportscar. ...perhaps moderately more useful. It still won't get me what I'm looking for.

* Honestly, I think some of it is that I keep looking for objective measurements that I'm doing well, and it's a big ol' thorny subjective world out there, and there are six billion different and usually contradictory rubrics available to grade myself against.

* * For example, I am an absolutely wretched conservative Christian.

* * But I like to think I'm at least a competent speculative fiction author.

* So, if I have to discard the HAVING THINGS/ACCOMPLISHMENTS model of Feeling Good About Myself, that leaves me at the common-sense stage of "...maybe instead of focusing on the XBox Acheivements (real life edition) of concepts of self-worth, I actually have to learn to like myself on my own terms, and for my own self (rather than Because It Can Be Demonstrated That I Am Doing Well), which is something I'm still learning how to do.

* * But I'm making some progress, I think.