June 8th, 2004
I have this overpowering urge to know everything and be at least somewhat capable of all tasks. It is not virtue--not by a long shot ... it's just a very typically (though not exclusively) male urge to "know it all." It's not that I actually think I do though; in fact, when I am left to my default attitudes about myself I think and feel as though I know nothing, and am somehow not adequate to any challenge, since even the things I can do well I think I have somehow cheated to achieve.
Example: I had nearly abandoned piano playing for several years, and when I returned to it I started with an ambitious piece of music, the "Piece Within a Piece" from the 1st movement of Bach's 5th Brandenburg Concerto. Pretty challenging, really; the first part has lots of contrapuntal movement and those typical Bach-esque key modulations, while the second part has some insanely car-chase-like quick virtuostic passages that made my initially-out-of-shape hand muscles cramp up and ache. But I learned it after some serious time spent practicing, and could count my piano skills as 90% of what they once were, and ability to play emotionally ("do it with feeling!") at about 400% of my previous levels. But did I feel good and proud about my abilities? No. Did I even take a moment to acknoweldge that there was some merit in what I was doing? No. I'd play it for friends, and I'd lie awake in bed afterwards doing the slow-burn about this screwed-up note, or that muddled passage. I'd think that I am not learning control in the fast parts, rather I am just playing them as fast as my fingers will go; therefore, I am cheating there. I'd think that since my fingers could not reach one or two sustained bass notes, that just playing them quickly and then moving my hands to catch the next notes was a compromise that would have made Bach frown at me. More cheating, more inadequacy ... or so I thought.
There is no value in bopping oneself upside the head for the flub-ups. As a professional at work, I am slowly learning to take bug reports as just some more work to do. I don't want to keep getting defensive with myself and getting defensive with others. This is because there is no virtue in being angry at myself for not "measuring up" to a non-existent standard I set in my head. I must drop the notion that there is a standard, and I must drop my overpowering urge to adhere to it, since the more I'm reminded that I'm human, the greater the heights my heart rate and blood pressure rise to. Oh bad bad bad, isn't it?
Being a person on the older side of the Young Spectrum, I have now met enough men (and some women, though primarily men) who--like me--live alone in their feelings that they somehow don't measure up to the Man Standard ... and, furthermore, have only got to where they are in life through dumb luck and "cheating."