Confidence

A couple of weekends ago, I was faced with the very urgent need to make some major life decisions in order to augment my future prospects. While dealing with the panic that caused, I had a bit of an epiphany while trying to talk myself down.

This is where my brain went: I submitted a story on January 15 after hours of editing and rereading without a second opinion.

I did not ask someone to read it before I sent it out. This is important. After I initially wrote the story for submission two years ago, I did have someone read it and provide feedback –but at that point my confidence had been shot.

And it has been a long road trying to rebuild it.

Comparing myself in my first two years of university to me in my last two years, my confidence in my own ability to write anything had been slowly eroded by one thing and another. And another. It got to the point that in my last year I had someone read each and every paper I wrote before I handed it in in order to stave off panic attacks. That is easily the worst my neuroticism has ever gotten and I never want to turn back into that version of myself.

Even since graduating, and finding a relatively stable job to pay the bills, if I’ve written something I need someone to read it, and not just for beta reasons. I strongly believe in beta readers, but my need fed more into my own inability to deem my work good enough rather than needing a reader’s general feedback.

The fact that I was able to send out my story without someone else telling me it was ready to go is huge for me. I finally have my confidence back! Or a semblance of it. Which means I’m finally able to start taking steps forward as far as my writing career is concerned.

But I’ll touch on that down the road.

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