Inner critic

I'm tired of my inner critic beating me up. I'm tired of not standing up for myself against it, for believing it as truth when in reality that voice is a mixture of a lifetime of outer voices telling me who I am or who I'm not (some well-meaning, others not at all, but very few from really bothering to know me, and most of it someone else's fears projected onto me. And besides, I've changed a million times, a million things since the voices first spoke, I'm not who I was when those words might have been true...so why am I letting them have so much power?) It's not the voice of God. It's not even the voice of me, or of any kind of truth. Just a nag sitting on my back telling me everything I do is wrong and that I'll never be good enough, so why bother? Shut up already! And because I'm trying to do something now, it's really loud. And it drowns out legitimate advice.

Just got invited to a Sounder's game tonight, which would be fun, but I need to get my head on straight and figure out what's going on in my life. If I were more organized, it wouldn't be so crazy, but right now I feel like I've got tunnel vision just so I don't lose my mind. Might be some let up in November. I enjoy all of it, I just am not getting enough down time, hardly any at all, and I need a lot. I probably need to cut back on stuff, but I want to sing for the Christmas concerts, so need to get to most of those rehearsals. We have a couple big events in the spring, but I might be able to cut back on rehearsals after Christmas, or maybe I'll get more in a groove with all of this scheduling.

The fog is almost burned off now. Had a glimpse of the Olympics from the bus stop earlier, more snow since the last time they were visible. One of the ski resorts (Cascades) opened for limited use a couple of weeks ago. It's not that you forget you are surrounded by mountains, but it's always a pleasant surprise to see them again after so much heavy gray, and to see that they've changed in the intervening days. We're having a vibrant autumn as well, think it has something to do with the weather, how much color the leaves get year to year. Yesterday we had a downpour, and when it had passed and the sky cleared, there was bird song erupting in the air everywhere. All of this sensory overload (in a good way.) The power flashed after the clap of thunder and I wondered if it would blow out the servers and send us home (it didn't.) But a few hours later, there was a water main break down the hill which set off all the fire alarms here, and we had to wait outside over an hour for someone to come turn them off, so we got out early after all. Thankfully, it was neither raining nor cold by that point.

I saw five robins in the Fill a couple days ago, still none here, nor by my house, but I was happy to see them. They seem to have been replaced by Stellar Jays in the old haunts. Lots of acorns this year.