Driven
I tend to not handle pressure or stress very well. When too many things start crowding in and life starts getting a bit overwhelming, I start going into escapism mode. This means eating, shopping (retail therapy! Yeah!!!), and... reading romance novels. Oops.
A few weeks back I found myself thinking that I will never be efficient. Demands were pressing in on me from all sides, my To-Do list stretched a mile long, I had no idea which item to tackle first, I was sooooooo not on top of things, feared I'd miss deadlines, and to top it off, I KNEW I wasn't working at full capacity.
You see, some people work extremely hard. They're very focused, and they just work and work and work and work. I'm not one of those people. When I'm focused I'm focused, yes, but I am not the type to work with fierce single-minded dedication 100% of the time.
I could be a lot more efficient and get a lot more accomplished and... oh well. The point is, I'm not like that and NOBODY believes that this is okay (being inefficient is not exactly considered a good thing). I've always been terrified that my various employers would find out exactly how little I'm doing and compare it with how much I could be -- or should be -- doing, and will fire me. Eek!
So I always live in fear that I'm not doing enough and that I'll never be able to do anything really well. I've never talked about this... I do talk about constantly feeling that I'm always failing God, but at least I can use my human-ness as an excuse (being that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"). But I don't have any excuse for, you know, being disorganised, having lousy time management, poor self-discipline, and all that other stuff that leads up to inefficiency.
Perhaps it is true that we are always hardest on ourselves. I'm sure many people would say that I can't be THAT bad if I managed to survive four years writing for a newspaper, with the constant deadlines such a job entails. Well, I spent almost every day of those four years fearing that I wasn't doing enough and that I might get fired at any minute. Obviously I'm much more neurotic than you ever realised. *rueful smile*
I have this humongous problem with self-acceptance and needing to be perfect. The only thing in my life that I'm truly confident about is my writing -- I know I'm capable of writing good stuff (although this doesn't mean that all the stuff I write is good!). I'm mostly secure in my friendships with others, too, which helps to keep me sane. Every other area is up for grabs.