Couldn’t have said it better…

What I have come to realize… in the last few short months, is that my self judgments, do not stem from myself, they were all things at one time, that someone else told me were not ok, or that even at some point I THOUGHT someone THOUGHT about me… the true challenge is to free yourself of this burden of judgment, and to truly love yourself… this is happiness!! Damn the man, that shit doesn’t make you, you… YOU DECIDE… YOU!

This was posted on a “friend’s” blog on MySpace. I went to school with her, that is really the extent of our friendship… and for the first time, I read her blog. That post tugged right at my heart and soul. It’s what I’m dealing with right now. Breaking free of expectations and roles that I may or may not have placed on myself. I’m a girlfriend, a sister, a daughter, a designer, a business owner, a friend, a writer, an artist, a reader, a thinker, a twenty-something struggling with this “quarter-life crisis” fun. I’m a lot of things. And I associate expectations with these things. The true challenge really is to free yourself. To ask yourself, who am I? Who do I want to be? What will it take, from me, to get to that point?

When I broke down the other day, I was feeling the weight of all of these expectations, all the pressure. External and internal. I admitted that I knew most of it was self-imposed. Just like she said, things I thought others thought about me or said to me. One of the most freeing things I’ve realized in the last few months is that I don’t have to answer to anyone. I get a speeding ticket, I don’t get my car taken away, I don’t have to hear a lecture. I’m an adult. I can do as I please, it’s my life. It’s freeing. But what would make it better, is if I could let go of all these ingrained expectations. I wrote a piece today called Sometimes I Wonder and it’s on my side blog. It’s about losing that creative force that drove me so long ago. Feeling like I’ve lost it… One of the biggest expectations and pressure I put on myself is living up to society’s standards of an artist. Living up to what I think M thinks makes a good artist… his mom, the community, you bloggers…

What’s funny is, I can not place the point at which I decided I had to live up to some sort of standard. I can not remember a moment where someone said something to me about my art, or my writing, that made me feel like it wasn’t good enough. So this major one, is 100% self imposed. This is insecurity and probably comes from me being so private with my work. Never sharing… never received feedback and not only did I not feel good about my work, I didn’t grow. And eventually, that part of me faded away. Like Danny Gregory talks about, as kids, we don’t worry at all about whether or not we “can” draw. All kids draw. All kids make things. As adults… that sort of fades away. I guess it’s self comparison at it’s worst, comparing myself to someone I think is better. But instead of using that to push me forward… I simply stopped.

And wondering “where it went to” is really silly. It’s there… the feeling that I “can’t” comes from worry that it won’t live up to what I think it has to. So how do I get rid of this? I accept the challenge she talks about, the challenge of freeing myself from this burden of judgment… but how do I do it? Take a look at my expectations? Where they come from and whether or not I want them around? Do I just commit from this point forward to be true only to myself and who I am? To love myself regardless of whether I meet other’s expectations? To promise myself that I won’t worry about those people and what they think? That’s asking a little much of someone who also feels a struggle to figure out who she is… maybe that’s where I need to start. Who am I? Who do I want to be? And what will it take to get there?