Dedication and Delusions

I had an epiphany a few years ago while having a conversation with a friend. It is amusing how we come to a point of self realization when evaluating someone else's situation. At the time she was telling me that she did not have any Friends. I asked her about myself and she said that I knew what I meant. In actual fact I really did because at some point of my teenage years I had the same problem. I think by growing up watching t.v shows like 'Beverly Hills 90210','Melrose place' and 'Friends' we all assumed that there was an amazing group of friend out there that were just waiting for us to join them and make their awesome circle complete. In actual fact we did not realize that we were already part of that group and we did not have the savvy to turn around and re-evaluate the friendships we already had or how much our friendship meant to other people. This made me think about myself a bit more clearly.

You see, how this situation applies to myself is very simple. In my head, I  am amazing at nearly everything, the problem being I just never applied myself to one certain thing. In my head I am an amazing poet, an author unlike any other, an aspiring artist and half a dozen other things. The problem, that I always told myself,  is that I never nurtured any of these "talents" of mine. The source of this delusion goes back, way back to my school days. Every year on my school report there was certain to be one of two things:

A) The fact that I talk way too much in class
and
B) I would do much better in school if I only applied myself better.

While I knew A) was a fact and could never change since it was hereditary (passed down through the woman in my family.....wanna argue Mom?) I never did anything to change it for I knew where my destiny lay in this aspect. But when it comes to B), I was sort of always ashamed at this because I knew I could do so much better so in my head I built up this picture of a person who applied herself  ( I sound like a glue stick) to everything and always tried her best. Now, in a way, thinking back to my earlier school days, I now know that some of my teachers where not the best and while I respect them for what they did, I think they took the fact too lightly that they were the ones responsible for molding us into who we will evidently become one day. I think  the thing they should have done was to pin point the place where I could have applied myself, therefor given me a direction in life and not just a fantasy of being an appliable person ( I just made up that last part so bear with me on this)

Now that you know my background and how I came to this point in my life, I will explain why my friend's situation applied to my life. Instead of musing over what I should have aspired to, I should think about what I can do. Instead of dreaming about being a poet or master artist I think I should evaluate the things that I am good at. Instead of these things, I think I have found something I love and while I do not hold it on the same level as poetry, I think that through my love of crochet and my search of inspiration and pushing the boundaries, I have unknowingly nurtured my love of manipulating yarn into tiny little works of art. A talent I have is that I can replicate a lot of patterns just by looking at them and making my own assumptions as to which stitch was used and how many to get it to look like the item I am viewing. While I never thought this to be something worthwhile, my friends have always admired this and while I love my friends dearly and know they would love anything I made, I never took their admiration too seriously until complete strangers started complimenting me on my work.

I know I sound like I am tooting my own horn but for a person who has always known that she has not aspired to what she wanted or what people expected of her, I myself think it is a feat in it's own right and I am learning to like my new found appreciation for my work and looking forward to finding out what other traits I might excel in if I could only learn to look at them more as talents and not just hobbies. So till next time...Chow!