People Underestimate Chicken Glasses

paucity.

noun.

the presence of something only in small amounts; scarcity.

Latin. paucus. few.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I don't know about you reader but I was taught that it's Fire Safety Approved to close your door when you go to bed at night. And I do that. But what that means is that every morning you have to make the choice to open that door and let everything that shifted under the cover of night rush in with the light and grab hold of you tight.

And there's a lot of different emotions that you can feel about that. Relief, anxiety, laziness, reluctance, despair, hope, it's a lot of weird stuff coming hard and fast and what you make of it may ultimately define who you are as a person. Is that fair? Maybe. Probably.

This isn't supposed to be a hopeful thing. Or empowering. If it was that I'd say something like 'Never be ashamed! Life's too short! No regrets!'

Never be ashamed?

That doesn't make any sense. Sure you can be ashamed. It's something you can feel, right? Sure there's stuff you can be ashamed about. It's a completely valid way to feel.  Even if it's under the guise of good or positive intentions, making broad, sweeping value judgments about feelings is a pretty dangerous and messed up thing to do.

Am I ashamed of this drawing? Sure I am. Look at it. It's awful. It's a mess. I should feel bad that I made such a terrible thing and put it on the Internet forever. But I don't feel bad about feeling bad about it.

I feel great about feeling bad about it! What a wonderful gift to have! A terrible thing that I made and I hate. I tried to share information with the world and it dribbled out of my head in an unwieldy messy way and affirms that I am human and that you can strive to be better than this without even having to strive very hard. Aren't those the best teachers? The things we look at and say, "Well, I know I could do better than that. There's no chance I'll fail so I'm just gonna go for it." We just kinda tumble over that bar that's so low we only have to trip over it. And then we're on our way!

Yes we need high expectations but we can't meet them in one giant leap. It's a crumbling, janky, jerky, jutty staircase to the top. Or middle. Or bottom. Or wherever.