I have accepted that my parents may never understand that EMAILING IN ALL CAPS IS SHOUTING AND EMAILING IN ALL CAPS AND DIFFERENT COLORS is like screaming at the top of your lungs while running around in a clown suit juggling flaming sheep. (No sheep were harmed in the making of this analogy.)

Via Gill: everything really is a bathtub.

Discovery: getting in the habit of not volunteering to take meeting notes has considerably raised the quality of my experiences at meetings.

Had one of Those Moments today. It wasn't a particularly big or spectacular one, but I need to sit and breathe and come out of it a little...

Why do I panic when I do well? Whenever I forget and let myself be great at something - not just good, but actually let-'er-rip great - and then realize it afterwards - I sometimes physically tremble uncontrollably from realizing it, and sometimes have to consciously make a decision not to let panic or tears well up. It feels like terror being fought by pride.

I spend a lot of time fighting myself, simultaneously trying to do as well as I possibly can and then yank myself back because... well, I don't know. Allowing yourself to shine is terrifying. (What if your best - your real best - is still not good enough? At least this way you have "oh, I could have done better" as an excuse; it's your own willful fault rather than a shortcoming you perhaps can't fix.) I'm fairly certain that a good portion of what I've done is not the best that I could do. It's the best I can do now, with the ability I have to counteract this tendency.

I think that's why I keep coming back to this idea, and why I've written - chosen to think, I reckon - about these kinds of moments as something else passing through me. Dissociate that greatness from myself; I can't accomplish things like that. And on the one hand, yes, I do believe it's Someone other than me working through me. (Generally speaking, God is much cooler than I am.) And on the other hand, I do try to optimize my potential as a vessel, so that also makes crazy things possible.

Feh. I ramble now.