How to be bold?

“Next to Resistance, rational thought is the artist or entrepreneur's worst enemy. Bad things happen when we employ rational thought, because rational thought comes from the ego. Instead, we want to work from the Self, that is, from instinct and intuition, from the unconscious.

A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. Its only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.” - Steven Pressfield, Do the Work

So this quote was emailed to me today, June 6th, for the Trust 30 writing challenge.  It's about being bold and doing the thing that I've been hesitating on.  I doubt myself.  The writing challenge asked what I want to accomplish but am afraid to try?  How do I rationalize it away?

Today I went to the MATC adult learning center for a "Dislocated Workers" program.  The career counselor urged us to get into a program that could help us get money for classes.  I have thought about going to MATC for a while now.  I still don't know what I'd like to study.  I found out today that there are waiting lists for most of their degree programs. I don't have the money.  I haven't been in school for a long time.  As I already mentioned, my placement test scores for math were bad.  Those are my doubts and obstacles to going back to school.

I'm pretty good at thinking about my obstacles and not deciding that I can do these things.  I hesitate & doubt myself.  Deep down I know that I'm more capable than I allow myself to be.  I think it's time that I start investigating things.  I'm going to take some steps. 

Travelin Girl

So it's been a few days since my last Trust 30  post. The writing prompts are thought provoking. I haven't been that inspired to write, though. Maybe I should just trust myself and write!

The writing exercise for June 4th is called Travel. The exercise writer assumes that we all have a desire to travel. That's true for me. I'd love to go to Europe. It's been so long since I studied French in high school. I would be pretty rusty, but I'd love to check out Paris.  I've heard that Eastern Europe is beautiful.  I know very little about it, so I want to learn more and maybe visit.  I don't have the money to travel to Europe right now.  I do wanna go, though.

I love this video of Dwele & his band performing the song Travelin Girl.  He's a great songwriter.  I like his style & voice.  The horns are hot!  His iPhone Chronicles videos are funny.  He's a clown.  (Go to Dwele's Youtube page for the IPC videos.)  His homemade music videos look professional & are really creative.  I'm gonna have to blog about a few of em.

I wonder if this is Dwele's apartment or his studio?  By the way I love how his dog Rockstar shows up in most of his homemade videos! Hey Rockstar!

Yesterday's Today

I skipped the Trust 30 writing assignment yesterday. I just reread it and it's more interesting and thought provoking than I thought. Yesterday's writing exercise is called "Today". It's another wide open task, asking me to "describe today using one sentence." What's meant by today? The literal 24 hour period? Can today be more abstract and refer to the society that we live in with its values, behaviors, etc.? Should I use yesterday June 1, 2011 as the day in question? That was the day I received the email prompt.

Liz Danzico, the author of yesterday's writing prompt, brought up an interesting idea when she wrote "If ‘the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tracks,’ then it is more genuine to be present today than to recount yesterdays." I don't know anything about sailing a ship. I guess the ship has to zigzag because the water is always moving around it. It moves back and forth in response to the water, but still gets to its destination. In the present moment it's going toward its destination, even if it just zigzagged.

I've spent a lot of time dwelling on my past. My previous writing assignment shows that. I was kinda depressed in the past because I internalized the insults and negativity of the past. At any point in time things weren't that bad. But I criticized myself for things I said or did in the past. Thanks be to God, I'm getting out from under that negativity.

Ok, so after all that, I haven't written a sentence to summarize today. I'm going to refer to today, June 2, 2011. I went to MATC to take their college placement test. I'm trying to get into a job training program with funding from the county job center. So, to summarize that experience in one sentence, I would say:
Today I found out that I'm not very good at algebra, and I'm ok with it.

A new writing assignment

We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is my first entry into the Trust 30 writing challenge.  It's a 30 day writing task meant to help participants look into themselves and trust themselves more.  The above quote was emailed to me along with the writing assignment to imagine I had 15 minutes left to live and write the story that needed to be told.  That's a wide open assignment.  It seemed right to reflect on what happened in the past and compare it to the present. I'm not sure if what I wrote had much to do with the above quote.  I just wrote what came to mind in a 3rd person story form. See the blue paragraphs below.

Once there was a girl living in a small town. She went to school with the same people every year. She was called ugly, fat & dumb. She actually did pretty well in school, but she doubted herself. She often didn't like her work. Sometimes she didn't allow herself to be creative. She had internalized the negative messages from her peers. She expected to be criticized. When she went to college she still had doubts. She isolated herself by playing a lot of online games.

Eventually she found a church group who cared & prayed for her. Slowly but surely God brought her out of the negativity. She began to feel better about herself and her abilities. However, she still wondered about her place in life. She stood at a crossroads, unsure of which direction to go. Her head was clearer of the negative fog that she had been under as a child & teenager. She was indeed grateful to God for revealing little bits of His grand love for her. Unsure of what the future held, at least she had positivity in her life to point her in a direction, any direction that she chose.

Blog Resurrection

Ok, so this Reticent Squirrel blog has been dormant for about 3 years. Dang. I guess I never felt as though I had anything to say. That's part of the problem. I used to find fault in a lot of things I try to write. I don't consider myself a writer. I sometimes self criticized random thoughts I put in a blog. I just spent a few minutes reviewing my old posts. They aren't half bad. I don't know why I sometimes self criticize.

I decided to resurrect this blog because of something I saw on Twitter. Yes I'm on Twitter now. I express myself daily, 140 characters at a time, lol. I follow a lady named Tricia Huffman. I learned about her through Jason Mraz. It's official. I'm a big fan of his! (I saw him live in concert since this blog post, borrowed his cds from the library, put them on my ipod and watched plenty of his live Youtube clips.) Tricia toured with Jason Mraz as his "Joyologist". I guess she coached him on yoga & nutrition? I'm not sure. @BeingTricia tweets a lot of positive affirmations. They've helped me in one way or another.

Well, Tricia Huffman posted an article on her blog about a 30 day writing challenge based on a Ralph Waldo Emerson book called Self Reliance. I know almost nothing about Emerson & his writings. I decided to take the writing challenge though. Why not? I can think about my life and circumstances. I can post my reflections here. Here goes...