Well, this is fun. Due to some really horrible miscalculation, I'm several hundred dollars short this month. Bloody hell. This means that all my careful planning of new ventures and scheduled, budgeted funding of them are all blown to smithereens. Ok, I exaggerate a bit: The plans are mostly valid, but have to be either sped way up or delayed at least a month or two. Mistakes in the recent past are pretty well guaranteed to have annoying repercussions at least through the present.
It also means that I am a really good person to hire for design work just now. Being a complete mercenary is normal for me, but right now someone hiring me to do a web site in the range of $500-$1000 or thereabouts will get amazing speed of service and probably a fair bit more than they paid for. People tend to say that about my work anyway, but at this point even I'll agree to the truth of it. Also available for logos, posters, magazine layouts, photography, sandcastles, etc, of course. Tell all your friends.
Before this dire financial revelation landed on me, I was discussing with some other writers the embarrassment of mistakes made before some sort of mental reformation was done. I have been, at a couple points in my life, a pathetic excuse for a human. That it was in large part in service to being a good person doesn't make it any less cringe-worthy. I was a confused, needy, flailing little dweeb, by turns fawning and insensitive. Many opportunities for good things were missed, some of which I recognized and even commented on as they flew by. I have no idea how many people I annoyed, but it's bound to be a sizable number.
Now, some people I don't mind annoying. I've always had a unique ability, since first grade or thereabouts, to irritate those at the top of the male social ladder, even when I was no threat in the least. They tend to be asses, and while my inadvertent provocation confused me a bit, it really didn't bother me much even then. No, it was the aggravation by obsequiousness that pains me in retrospect. If I'd stopped trying to fit a mold that made no sense, I'd have been much better off.
The sins of the distant past hurt more than the recent mistakes, usually. Not sure why. I've learned from them, made good use of a lot of it, and am very unlikely to ever repeat any of that nonsense. At least part of it is the shame of causing some sort of harm to people I can't make it right with. I am embarrassed to be associated with the lame dork that I once was, and unable to fix his mistakes of the past. But what I do know intellectually is that they don't matter any more, at least in any negative way. They're gone, and in any practical sense only their lessons remain. Now if I can only get my emotional reactions to agree with that idea, it'll be great.
So here I am, in the part of a personal reconstruction project that is entering an outward phase, after years of reflection and remaking my internal structures. I'll tell you about that another time. I'll also expand on this fact: When circumstances get me down and my usual positive-thought motivations aren't doing anything, I can use their opposite numbers to spur me into action. Almost any of the famed cardinal sins are handy for motivation when one is pissed off. Sloth not so much, and gluttony only of certain sorts, but for the most part they're effective in bringing back focus. A combination of wrath and envy/lust (almost interchangeable in most of their forms) is a nice firestarter.
I can almost hear the concern troll come out from beneath its bridge, demanding a toll for admitting such a thing. It can go hang. I am royally pissed off right now, and that sort of crap is going to get kicked in the platitude. Whatever gets energy corralled and productively directed is what gets used in these situations. I'll be motivated by puppies and rainbows again when they're not a liability.
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