Tumblr kinda sucks. Great for throwing short thoughts into the internet. Horrible for actually working with those thoughts and interacting with others.
On Tumblr I had written the following:
I’m a really bad investment. I wouldn’t loan me money. Which is why I’m finding it really hard to ask for what I need. I foresee more failure and inability to pay back the debt. That means that instead of just squandering my own resources I will have caused someone else to waste theirs as well. I will have spread the failure like a disease. I’ll be the Typhoid Mary of worthlessness, infecting anyone unfortunate enough to interact with me. — Yeah, I’m a bad investment. A real long-shot. You’d get a better return by setting your money on fire and then storing the ashes in a moose carcass.
I had forgotten that I had enabled some comments over there. (Through a third-party service. Tumblr itself is useless for comments.) I like being able to respond to things and have others respond, and Tumblr doesn’t seem very friendly that way. It makes it pretty hard to interact on that platform. However, a fellow blogger, John, did reply:
Sometimes, people don’t expect a payback … sometimes people are willing to invest, just to give you an opportunity, without expectation of return of their investment.
When I was about 22, I needed some money badly, so I finally asked a friend. I told him I didn’t know how long it would take to pay him back. He told me “don’t worry about paying me back. give it to someone else when they ask you for money.”
And, I’ve kept my part of the bargain … still, to this day, I give when asked, with the same reply about “paying it back.”
If you don’t ask, you’ll never know … and, if you’re so convinced that you’ll be a failure going forward, that’s not very encouraging — it’s setting yourself up to fail before you even try.
If people don’t see that you believe in yourself, why would you expect them to believe in you?
I was going to respond, but in all honesty, I really hate the way Tumblr handles itself. I decided that I had a small story to tell and that it was not the place to do so.
…Which brings you all up to speed.
Several years ago, I had the opportunity to take an intensive sort-of class. A Master Class workshop that would last a week. It was an attempt to jump into a different line of work and get out of a situation that was not working out. Someone offered me the money. I promised to pay it back someday, but she said she wouldn’t hear of it. It was a gift and she wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I still planed to pay it all back, but she was very adamant about it.
A few years later, I was back on my feet, but by no means well off. Somewhat out-of-the-blue, she demanded that I return the ‘gift’. (Perhaps “demanded” is a touch harsh. It never became an angry situation.) She wanted to buy a second vehicle and she wanted that money back now. It left me feeling cold. What could I do? I had said I would pay even when she swore it was a gift and that she wouldn’t accept it back. I wrote her the check without a word and it made things very tight for a long while after that. I had it, but it wasn’t available if you know what I mean.
So, the lesson that I took away from this was that even gifts are subject to recall at a moment’s notice. Can I trust what others say about money? Perhaps I could… but I won’t.
But now I’m going to do it again. I’m borrowing money and I’m “trying” again. My biggest fear is that I will fail again… but it’s bigger than that. I won’t just be failing on my own. I’ll be wasting someone else’s money. That makes them fail. And if it comes down to it, if going on is really and truly no longer an option, then I’ll be that much more damned because of the unpaid debt. I could care less about debt to a bank or a credit card company. Running up that bill before I snuff-it doesn’t bother me much at all. But this is personal. This is money that someone worked for. A sizable amount of their effort distilled into currency and poured down my poisoned well. Gone.
— — —
As to my believing in myself… yeah. I agree. That’s probably no surprise. My confidence is shot through with more holes than Swiss cheese. I don’t believe in Me anymore and I don’t see why anyone else should either. I secretly (or maybe not-so-secretly) think this is why I am still unemployed.
Because they know.
Because they ALL know.
(A gas-station with a “now hiring” sign in the window has ignored my application. Did you know that? No, of course you didn’t. Isn’t that amazing? I can’t get a job at a gas-station that’s openly hiring.)
I have been turned down, and passed over, and kept on file, and outright rejected because I’ve got no confidence left inside me. And they can smell it rising from the paper my resume is printed on. They can taste it in my emails and in my phone calls. They can feel it twisting in my application.
If there’s a way out of that, I don’t see it. And that’s the kicker. It alters my world-view. I probably wouldn’t be able to see it even if it were shown that it was otherwise. Someone could stand in front of me with scientifically-documented evidence of something good in me, and I wouldn’t be able to acknowledge it.
My rose-colored glasses are caked with mud.
The Deep Roads 