this morning, I realized that not only had I missed this particular workshop (one I had attended a few years in a row, actually), but that it had not even really been on my radar enough for me to even have thought of it until this moment. And I felt that familiar, wistful sense of disappointment . . . that sense of “I remember when I used to love _______”

at first, I thought, “well, that’s just typical of how I am. I’m interested in something for a while, but then the interest just fades, or I move on to something else.” I’ve known this about myself for quite some time, right?

I probably take on too much. Certainly not because others ask, but because I offer myself to it. If I want to paint a flattering portrait of myself, I can refer to it as “taking initiative”, but if I want to go another way, I might say that I’m taking on things that I haven’t been asked to take on, or that I’m trying to be something I’m not . . . (something I will never be?)

but this morning, it suddenly hit me (thanks in part, I’m sure, to other recent circumstances) that maybe part of what causes me to lose interest in things is not that I try to pour too much of myself into stuff and thereby burn myself out too soon, but that these efforts of mine to go above and beyond are ignored . . . I always saw it as a case of ME being wrong, a kind of “how dare you try to do more? don’t you know your place?” but now I wonder if there’s a chance that my mother might have been wrong . . . that it’s not ALWAYS about what I’ve done.

(as a child, I was told that anything that went wrong, particularly in friendships, “must be something you did”, and I’m sure some part of me still believes that. okay, a very BIG part of me still believes that.)

maybe my passion and energy are NOT completely wrong . . . and maybe I’m “burning out” over and over, not because I never should have pursued these things in the first place, but because the people around me didn’t share my passion. and MAYBE there’s some tiny fragment of truth here that could actually mean that everything that goes wrong in my life (and there is just so much that goes wrong in my life!) isn’t always 100% my fault. Sure, if I can’t get others on board with the things I’m passionate about, i suppose that means I’m not a good leader, but I am not one of those people who believes that “everybody is a leader” anyway, so that’s okay, right? maybe it’s just the way things are.

maybe.

but just for the record, it really does suck to be me right now.