hmm

Recent rumination has revealed to me that I am always hoping to impress other people. Always. Even people who have known me for decades, warts and all, I still keep trying to make a good impression on them.

It can be anything... showing people my work and hoping that this will strike them as an uncommon and remarkable thing for someone to do... doing a good turn and hoping that I will seem like "value added"... trying to find something from my own experience to add to any conversation, as if to say "look, I have a contribution to make".... even confessions like this, which make me seem introspective and self-aware and like A Guy Who Thinks About Things...

I feel like I always need to provide a reason to justify why I am here... that I will never be good enough and I can never stop. And I know this isn't right, but I'm not sure yet what I can do about it.