You give birth to confidence, confidence does not give birth to you.

I think this might be a cheating aspect of the game.

I’m working through this book, “The Artist Way”, and it says I should be writing at least 3 pages a day to do the “morning pages”. I’m pretty sure I read that it should be done only by hand and not by computer – or typewriter I think it said during the time it was written. Either way, today I feel like doing it on the computer. I’ve paid for this membership anyway, right? Might as well use it once a month at least! lol

Today I have the day off and I’m contemplating what do I do. I might go to the church I once wept at the feet of the alter, and then afterwards go to a local Italian shop to buy fresh ingredients to make homemade pizza. It’s been a very long time since I have cooked, especially cooked bread. Bread is actually once of my most favorite things in the world. And creating something with my hands, especially something I can enjoy and enjoy in multiple ways than just to look at it or say I’ve done it.  With bread, you get to create something and enjoy it through all of your senses. Not many things, other than food, can you truly speak that about.

It’s true for me – that I have lost a few aspects of my passion points. Cooking without having a desire to make something new, or to really try anything new. Change is creating a challenge is your life, and it’s up to you to either enjoy that challenge or to fight against all that it could teach you.

But for me, I usually love a good challenge. I’m ready and excited for it. But there has been so many things lately that has not been a God given challenge for me, and it has pushed me to change and work through challenges that did not really need to have been created for me. But, in a way everything is a God created challenge. Where does this leave me now?

I’m mainly speaking about work. Work – I work at an e-commerce company that sells pet supplies and I work from home. I have no major work friends, just a couple of associates I have never hung out with outside of work. For every outside-of-work event that was about to happen, I have figured out a way to not go. Even though connecting with others in the line of work we have the same work experience and working through them, is one of my favorite things. This is the first time in a long time that I am not focused on how I or others can do or be better at their line of work. I like to evaluate what I am doing or what others are doing and want to do better and be better. But not here, and def not now. And I’m not saying this all as a stab at the company, it’s just me really realizing that what I want from where I spend more than 40 hours a week, that I am meant to do something different and I have just stayed because I was comfortable and wanted to see growth in another area of this job that it had to offer and wasting another year, after these 4 years just for one 30 minute moment every week or bi-weekly is just not worth my time. I’ve finally realized how much my time is worth. And not only is it worth something in a different form – a more creative form. And for those “30-minute moments”, I got to learn more about me, and I am forever grateful for that. I am also grateful that I can find that space and time within other people, and more frankly do believe that that is what has been missing from my life more than anything. When you have a friend, you get to connect and create conversations. You get to also be another person you want to be. With multiple different types of friends, you get to “live as if” and you can find new ways to enjoy life and discover new things about life and yourself, as it is a reflection of you. And for others, I have shed shyly away from them. I have distanced myself from other people as much as I could for so long. Why? I didn’t want them to discover me and I didn’t want to be discovered. Whereas before that was all I wanted. I wanted to be discovered, to break free of all the barriers I’ve created myself, and just practice enjoying life.

At this point in life, I have realized that I will have ups and I will have downs. I will want to be cared for and I would want to be loved in ways I feel only I can be understood and wanted. That I am special, but not especially broken. That everyone can take their life’s experience and their life work and make it their own. And also, what they’ve struggled with does not have to always be their line of work. It can be the backbone of their work, but it does not need to be the visual aspect of their work that they put out there for everyone to see.

See, I love the Arts. I love making art, I love making something out of “nothing”. I also love what creating a product can do to someone’s self-confidence. God can take care of the selling part, but for me, I want to work on the creating part.

I’m also a past teacher. I feel like I can always be a teacher, but do I really have to be the teacher – always with my words? What if I created a short video – with no words to the audience – just them watching me how I make something. But also watch how my emotions go from curious, to sad, to mad, frustrated, ecstatic to see what I am making actually working, and through it all – at the end, officially displaying how the hard work will pay off and create that confidence. Because confidence is created through the work. Hard or easy, that’s where confidence lies. You can not buy it or have someone tell you how to be more confident, you have to build that through your own effort. You have to push out your own confidence from where ever it is hiding.  You give birth to confidence, confidence does not give birth to you.