On Praise

I started writing this while sitting in the Denver airport, because we got there three hours early to board our flight. Whoops.

I actually started writing (Blogger has drafts, nifty!) and then stopped, because without a screen protector, I actually felt somewhat exposed, blogging from a seat in the middle of a room. Hilarious, right? Because you could argue that posting on this completely-open-free-for-all of a blog means I don't really care what people think about me, right? Well, no. I've been quiet for three years, and it's taking time to get back in the habit of sharing, particularly when I feel like doing so exposes me to low-flying snarkbombs. I am taking tentative steps outside the garden gate, walking where it's no longer "safe".

I had an inspiration post that I want to write, but I need to digest some other things here first; it would be avoidant to allow this to keep going unsaid and unrecorded, and once you procrastinate from saying something once, it's really easy to continue to do so. It ain't healthy.

I can't accept praise. (Ooof.)  I'm not sure why.

I consider myself a pretty reasonable person, pretty self aware and always working on things. But lately there's been this theme of always feeling awful about my output, be it at work, or when sewing, or in whatever other activities. And at some point I became conscious that it's because I feel like I never receive real praise - and my own standards are stupidly high and unattainable. For example, this winter when we went through our review cycle and subsequent bonus/raise period, I fully expected to be put on a performance improvement plan. Instead, I got an eye-wateringly large bonus (seriously, I thought I'd misheard), and was told I was essential to the team. And then I realized too, that it's not that I don't receive praise - it's that I can't take any of it seriously.

At work, I'm always looking for intention behind praise. But at least at work the things we do are so uncritically good that I can tell myself that no matter what, the intention is useful; worse was when someone walked up to me at Dickens, and thanked me for "all that you do". My immediate thought was too uncharitable to print here, so I'll generalize: my immediate thought was that they were praising me not because I earned it or did anything particularly good, useful, or worthwhile, but because they wanted attention from me. And now I feel incredibly self-absorbed admitting that, but it's so easy to write off so much of the Faire community as being histrionic, self-congratulating, borderline-personality-disorder, actorbating, narcissists. (I am SO sorry. It's almost physically painful to write this, but not-writing it doesn't do me any good here. I need to admit this to process it.) To some extent, I realize that I am hungry for approval from people who I respect. And there are piteously few of those people around, and they tend to have standards just as high (or higher, perhaps?) than mine.

Thither the admission, thus the resolution.

(Oh, okay, I know, I know, resolutions are hard, and maybe passe, and set one up for failure, which is something that Impostors staunchly avoid. So doubly a resolution, to resolve to do anything?)

I will attempt, this year, to give meaningful praise whenever I can. Maybe I'll need to start slow here, but I think the start of being easier on myself will be to recognize the good (no matter how small, flawed, imperfect, or strained it may be) that other people do. And then maybe I can give myself a little credit for the things I do.

Dickens Fair Violets

Every person I've ever met in my profession has a folder in their desk where they print out physical copies of compliments they've gotten. I have one labelled "Kudos" and another coworker has one called "Violets". These make for good readings later, particularly if you're having a bad day.

So let me jot some bits for myself, so I can squirrel them away against possible future need:

Being totally unable to keep from laughing as I was trapped in the window at Dark Garden and serenaded by some of the street folk with my own song.

"There's a girl in the Dark Garden window with a pickaxe. Only Laura could pull that off. Ha, it's totally Laura! I win!"

A few returns to Fezziwigs, in which I was warmly greeted, prodigal though I might be. And the random swingathon that turned into an accidental Irish set, in between the rows of Cavalry Galopede.

Geeking out over primary source reprints with like-minded folks.

I spent a lot of time doing something I don't enjoy, but it had its high points.
A lady who came by and spent literally half an hour talking to me about Victorian cooking, because she was really really interested in what I was doing. She was astonished to find that there were reprints of Mrs. Beetons available cheaply, and more excited to find that (as I hinted without actually breaking accent, character, or language) there are scans for free on Google Books.

Talking to a nice gent who stopped to watch me slicing apples. He complimented me greatly on my knife technique, which I said wasn't really all that great because my knife was dull. He looked at it, looked at another sitting on the cutting board near me, and asked if he could sharpen them for me. I handed them over hesitantly, not sure about the wisdom of handing very sharp chef knives to a random member of the public, but! He swiped them against each other quickly, mentioning that he recognized the brand as having "good hard steel", then handed them back to me, incredibly sharp and now slicing through the apple skin like never before. Turns out, he's a chef at a fancy Mexican restaurant. I was doubly complimented.

"Where are you from?"
"London of course!"
"Really, which neighborhood? Me mum lives..."
"Oh, um, well, this neighborhood!"
"You're Californian aren't you?"
"Er, well..."
"Your accent it so good I wouldn't ever have known except that you tripped up there. I'm from Brighton!"

Showing kids that you can whip cream with a whisk never, ever, ever gets old.

The random drunk guy in a bad Halloween priest's cassock, who was absolutely fascinated by me rubbing citrus zest on lump sugar.

Traumatizing everyone with the unicorn jelly!

Hello World;

Apparently, I couldn't completely ditch my old ways. But I'm at least moving to a new platform, albeit one without privacy controls, or community, or... well... It's a brave, new, publicish world.

Hi there. My name is Laura. I will try not to post any sewing related content here (that's what the other blog is for). Can't promise much else.