Today’s Daily Stoic writing prompt:  How do my judgements cause me anguish?

This is a hard one for me, because I tend to worry too much about what other people are thinking about me, usually to my detriment, in situations where I feel out of my comfort zone.  I worry that I look funny and sound weird.  I worry that I will not be taken seriously.  I worry that people will judge me as an elitist snob, or as stuck up because I am generally an introvert.  I worry that people are looking to find fault with me, and then to laugh about it behind my back.  When this actually happens to you–as it did twice as a kid (in the 3rd and 7th grades) or in a workplace (as has also happened, it’s not paranoia, it’s reality.  It takes me a long time to trust people, and, even still, that worry still persists in the back of my mind.  I worry that with just a word or an action, I will be exposed as a fraud or my weirdness will become untenable.

Someone asked a general question yesterday:  If you could travel to any one place with someone not of your family or your spouse, where would you go and with whom?  It reminded me that I just don’t have that kind of close friends–the kind who you share everything with, the good and the bad.  I’ve had them for brief periods in the past, but not now.  Note that I am not bemoaning my lack of friends.  I have plenty. But that life-long boon companion ideal has never been realized, and at this point in my life, I don’t think it will be.  That wistfulness does sort of disguise the truth, however–instead of the eggs in a single basket of a single close friend, I instead have multiple good friends with differing perspectives and strengths–and knowing my personality, this is really a better ideal for me.

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Went for a long walk/hike today, and pushed it a little too far.  We had originally decided to go walking around the waterfront, but so did an awful lot of other people on a Saturday with a forecast high over 20 degrees, and the parking lot was overpacked.  After just 20 minutes on the trail, we turned around and opted to go walking on the local trails instead.  I had estimated I could probably walk for 2 hours, and unfortunately the additional 20 minutes did me in.  I am feeling better now, but it was a lesson to myself that I really do have a good sense of my own limits.  Because otherwise, this happens.

Attended a very neat talk this morning on the effigies in Fontrevault Abbey, with some interesting revelations about the paint, among other things.   It was sponsored by MEDATS and it was neat to see some old Kalamazoo friends on the call, including Gale Owen-Crocker.  I’ve joined MEDATS and am looking forward to reconnecting with folks doing serious clothing research.  It definitely gives me another impetus to accelerate the Russian language learning for something other than reading Shostakovich material, since I know just from books on my shelf there are archaeological finds and other works that I’d really love to read about but they have not been translated.

I’m on my final push on the cat embroidery;  in fact, as soon as I finish this I’m going to shut off the computer and make a concerted effort to get it done.