On the road

Well, today I go do Service to the Profession.

I think I need a day away. (Tomorrow is fieldwork. I think I MIGHT be able to squeeze in a wal-mart run before fieldwork if I get up early enough).

Well, what I really need is a classroom of 100% non-plagiarizing students who clearly care deeply about the information, but I guess that's not gonna happen. (I'm trying to  tell myself that the plagiarists let time get away from them, didn't feel they had time to write a paper, and made a foolish gamble that I wouldn't check. That's a worse bet than playing the lottery, but then again, lots of people buy lottery tickets.)

I will say it's a pity that the place I am going has less in the way of interesting shopping than the town where I live (at least, based on my quick run-through of the downtown one year) or I'd take a little while after my Service got done to go look for a treat. Oh well.

***
I have the arms and legs done for the Mabel Pines amigurumi, and I started on the hair but bogged down because the pattern is being counterintuitive to me. Normally if I just keep going and trust the pattern things work, but, meh.

And yet, what's the worst that could happen? I could have to rip it back, e-mail the pattern author for clarification, and start over. And yet, that seems enough of a hurdle I put the project aside.

I do notice my "fear of failure" (which I've pretty much always had) is coming back in strange ways. I don't tend to try new things (or try doing new things and putting them "out there") because of what I might call, "Internet comment section fear" or maybe "You Tube Jerk Fear" - like, I have a few ideas for pony fanfiction hanging out in my head, but I never sit down to write it out because I feel like the point of fanfiction is to share it, and I have this fear that if I write it and post it somewhere someone will essentially say, "You're an idiot, why did you think you can do this? This is terrible." Or, I feel a little the same way about playing piano in public. I could possibly do it at church because if I messed up there, no one would say anything (at least not to my face) but in other settings, I'd be afraid of overhearing, "Wow, for such an old woman, she really has no ability to play. She really lacks any skill at all."

I don't know. I know, I know, giving the jerks real estate in my head is a foolish move, but it seems like, with the rise of the Internet, everyone becomes a critic, and not only a critic, but some kind of crazed super-critic who doesn't want to just look at the technical aspects of what the person did, but go after them on an ad hominem level. And forget that noise. It's not worth it. And yeah, maybe I'd write wonderful pony fanfiction. Or design great sweaters. Or maybe, with a little work, I could play pretty well for an audience - but the nuffers have removed my desire to do that. And so, whatever in those areas I might have had to offer the world will go undone, because I just don't have the emotional energy to read someone's nasty comment about me. Good job, nuffers. 

A big part of it is that I have so little time for those kinds of things that the thought of putting in time and effort and then having someone poop all over it and ruin it for me - I just can't.