Wednesday was challenging. I was fighting myself.
The night before I had been practicing a song, and for some reason my feet weren’t agreeing with my brain. This disagreement made me spiral. What I now realize is that I was experiencing shame. I felt unworthy to play music. I felt like a fraud. An imposter. And above all, a complete waster of my time and an idiot for thinking I could play music. My response to that was to stay up late, face planted hard into the YouTube algorithm with fistfuls of M&Ms.
Though Wednesday was difficult, I was able to look inward enough to open a book. Serendipitously, I found myself reading about the role of shame in a person’s life and how to counter it. I didn’t understand shame prior that day, at least not how shame affected myself personally, but as of today I’m working on shame resilience and developing strategies to put my shame in the open so that those events are minimized. I know this path won’t be easy, but it feels liberating, and I look to forward to honing those skills and building connections.
Thursday was less challenging. I was motivated to read, but honestly the work was leaving me too drained to do much else. I’m proud of myself for how deliberately I read and the amount of energy I spent to really digest the words on the page and my relationship to them.
Friday was primarily recovery. I read in the morning and then took an afternoon walk. After getting back, I did have a brief thought of taking the rest of the week off, but I knew that wasn’t what I really wanted to do. I am ready to return tomorrow. I also practiced the song that set this whole chain of events in motion, and though still a bit sloppy, I was able to play it nearly to tempo.
I need to develop better strategies moving forward to remember that not being able to play something does not equate to being a bad musician. I need to become more comfortable sharing moments like that with people close to me so that the shame cannot set like concrete in my body, and leave me handicapped for days while I hope to find a jackhammer somewhere in between the wallowing.
I’ve got work to do, but I’m eager to do it. It won’t be easy, but there is such a big payoff waiting if I do, and I believe I have the courage necessary to do it.