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.