Exploring Insecurities-Part I

Once in a while – pretty much always unexpectedly – I would experience the bouts of insecurity, the bouts that like depression make me feel like dropping whatever is that I am doing in the moment and going into hiding – somewhere in the corner of a darkened room or even in the closet. Sometimes, the urge is literal – I physically want to do it, sometimes it is symbolical – I am paralyzed and there doesn’t seem to be anything that will make me continue… There is always a trigger – subtle or not so subtle, a trigger I might be (or might not be) conscious about. I was in the middle of the printing session yesterday working simultaneously on a draft for one of my listings when it just occurred to me that there are billions of incredibly talented people on Etsy and as inspiring as that is within and of itself, the fact remains – I experienced what can be best described as shrinkage: feeling little, almost non-existent, in thinking “what if nobody – ever – notices my work?” “what if nobody – ever – likes my work enough to purchase it?” Now, I don’t know what your experience with “what if’s” is like. For me, once a couple of “what if”s is thrown at me, or rather, once I allow a couple of “what if”s enter and stay, then I’d better be bracing myself for a free fall that would inevitably follow with tens of “what if”s zipping through my mind at lightening speed. And when it is finally all over – I find myself in the corner of closet (once again, literally or symbolically). So, how to address something like this? What is that teaching me? What am I learning? What makes me come out of the corner at the end? Oops, running late now – must go... (To be continued…)