spacecrafty

I don’t like how much I crave outside praise and approval. I just got a bit of a buzz off an e-mail about an e-newsletter I put out at my job, and as great as it makes me feel & as much as it probably will help me do my job through yet another grueling week, it makes me realize how demoralized I get without it. I got a great compliment from my Photoshop Techniques instructor last week and it lifted the entire class, which I’d been feeling really crap about, out of the gutter. What if I hadn’t really nailed the assignment, though? If I were more self-confident and what self-confidence I had was more self-sustaining, I could have shrugged off my other mediocre grades for the course (which I got because I had no enthusiasm for the specific assignments AND not a lot of time to devote to doing them well) or the lack of any feedback (especially positive) at my job & just trust my assessment that my skills are keen and that I’m doing a good job despite seeming to exist in a vacuum. I suppose one can’t really banish all desires for outside praise, as unless I were at the top of the chain of power, what the higher-ups think bares more weight than what I think. Still, trusting my judgment and still sticking with it when some one else disagrees with it, is something I’d like to be better at. And letting praise stick to my ego as much as criticism does would be nice too! If I were too successful at those goals, I might become egotistical and arrogant, but I think I’m really shooting for a healthy middle ground here.

Well, that was a lovely tangent. Speaking of work, I should be doing some. I think it will require more caffeine, however. Delicious, sanctioned addiction. But that’s another tangent…