For the past five days, I’ve been cleaning house blog.
I’ve decided that after almost four years, it’s time to update the blog’s look. I bought a beautiful WordPress template that is supposed to be easy, what is called “drag and drop”. Well, I can tell you that learning how it works is a real drag, and I was ready to drop the whole thing a few times. But, I persevered.
By the miracle of technology, I was able to export/import all the posts from this site to the future site. By the unreliability of technology, only 10 posts moved over (migrated), with their corresponding photos.
As the future blog will feature larger photos, and I don’t want to take the risk of undoing the miraculous post migration that I just mentioned, I decided to leave things as they are. What this means is that now I am involved in a multi-step process that includes re-downloading, editing, and uploading images to over 300 posts, one by one.
The upside to this finger-and-mind-numbing exercise is that I have re-discovered many posts that I had forgotten. Often, when checking how the newly edited photo looks on the post, I end up reading it. Doing this, in turn, has made realize two things. First, I’ve written an incredible number of posts. Second, damn, I’m a good writer.
Now, before you start thinking that I’m full of myself or full of you-know-what, let me explain that too many times what I’m full of is self-doubt:
- I should not write about a particular subject because what I’m saying has been said before and better.
- My writing is not as clear and/or powerful as others’.
- I’m too verbose.
- I could have, should have, done better editing.
- I should have spent more time researching.
On and on…
While I think that everyone has doubts from time to time, I think that self-doubt particularly affects those in creative fields, and perhaps it affects creative women even more so, as we additionally carry the burden of belonging to “the second sex”. Society tells us that we’re less, and we end up not only believing it but sometimes believing it more deeply than those who tell us it is so. We are so concerned about what others will think of us that we forget to think about ourselves. We stop ourselves from doing, from becoming, and we become our own worst enemies.
So, reading some of my old posts and feeling that I’m a good writer, is not only a much-needed ego boost, to counterbalance all the many times when I haven’t thought so, it is the realization that I’m proud of what I can do, of what I have done. For me, this is huge.
The truth is that sometimes I’m a good writer and sometimes I’m a lousy writer. What is important is that I continue to write. Why? Because I love it. Because my love for writing must be—is— bigger than my self-doubts.
And this (I know I’m not supposed to start a sentence with “and”, but what the hell), has made me have another realization: I have grown. It has taken years and tears, and coming up with my own motivational phrase: Action Satisfaction (I got tired of “Just Do It”). I say this to myself anytime I need to get my butt in gear. You should try it. It works.
I’m still not totally cured of the self-doubt-and-what-will-others-think bug, but I am freer than I have ever been. That’s the best realization of all.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I have no idea when the new look will be up. But, I will let you know.
