Self Discovery...

Today has been a typical Sunday where the fact we had nowhere to be and nothing urgent to do was embraced rather than moaned about.

D was playing golf with K this afternoon and has returned happy with his round for once despite hitting his ball on to the main road at the 17th. Twice! And Alan has been in teenage boy mode where eating and relaxing has been top of his priority list.

This kind of left me at a loose end well there's ironing to do but c'mon, you know me better than that and for the second time this week I felt the urge to put pencil to paper.

This is the result. It's supposed to be a rose but looks nothing like it should and as usual, when I'd finished, I had the overwhelming urge to screw up the sketch put it in the bin. I photographed it instead. At least now if I do bin it, I'll still have a record of it to compare any future efforts against, in the hope I can see even a tiny improvement.

Warning- waffle ahead. Feel free to stop reading here!

Over the years I have tried to understand why I have this urge / need to destroy my attempts at drawing & painting, but have drawn a blank (pun not intended:)

All I know is that if it's not absolutely perfect, I feel I have failed and everyone will think less of me / be disappointed in me, but I've no idea why I feel like this.

Over the past couple of hours it has finally dawned on me that I actually set myself up to fail. I set myself impossibly high standards, which, in my mind at least, always lead to failure.

I thought this attitude was confined to my artistic efforts but some hard thinking this afternoon has lead me to realise it pervades everything I do; cooking, how I look, decisions I make....etc etc. I always find fault and end up full of self doubt, with that little inner voice whispering "well of course you're rubbish at that , you're you!"

This realisation has come about as I have an ambition that I would love to achieve before my 50th birthday, in just under three years time. I'm not saying what it is at the moment (that would put added pressure on me and convince me even more that I'd fail) but when I plucked up the courage to tell David about it, I was astounded at how much belief he had in my ability to do it. He had not one single doubt I could achieve it yet there I was, already wondering why I'd mentioned it when it is obvious there's no way I'll ever pull it off. He gave me a right telling off when I said that.

So, what does all this mean for me? Well firstly I'm not going to destroy my sketch, no matter how crap
I think it is. Secondly, I am going to try REALLY hard not to judge myself so harshly and thirdly, I am going to start putting the wheels in motion for achieving my goal by January 2017.

It's time to cut myself some slack whilst simultaneously giving myself a kick up the backside.

If you've managed to read this far, I commend your dedication and apologise for waffling on, but I wanted to get these thoughts down whilst they were fresh in my mind

Normal service will be resumed tomorrow :-))