Life Lessons: Figuring Out How to Stand My Ground

One of my problems in life has always been that my mother really loved me. Everything I did was great ... she put all my drawings on the refrigerator, she clapped when I played my guitar, she was a cheerleader for any childhood undertaking I put my hands to. This may not sound like something you could write blues lyrics to, but there is a downside to being a golden boy — even in the small world of your own little home.

Being really appreciated makes you overly trusting and, well, sort of soft. 

I think I have had my share of hard knocks in life. I have gone through several heartbreaks, two failed marriages, some lost jobs and what not ... but I seem to have lacked, until recently, a certain exterior toughness, a shell or a shield. It may be wrong of me, but I attribute this to the lingering belief I have of myself, that I am basically a relatively good guy, and that, if people knew me, more of them would like me than not. I think I got this from my mother ... she just liked me too much. 

In the real world my Achilles heel, plays out in the many ways I put myself out in front of people, trusting in their humanity and my moderately warped idea of my own general good guyness ... and do not first hitch a shell to myself before stepping outside. As an artist, I get excited about ideas that come to me, and make them without hesitation, showing them to people without realizing what a cruel and critical world this can be. In music, I write a song and perform it asap ... while i am still interested in it. I think "Well this is a good song," and mistakenly assume that other people will think as well of it as I do ... or at least that they wont dislike it too much. Now, as a blogger, I get an idea, like this one, and I run with it, not even wondering if there are people hiding behind user names, that will take shots at me as I am skipping along my path. After all, I am not shooting at anyone — so why would they take a pot shot at me?

I am not the victim type. I like to learn from what comes my way in life ... be it crazy dogs, dangerous crack heads, aliens running remote brain scans on me or even strangers who reply to blogs. I am taking this as a positive process I shall call "annealing." I am slowly becoming a hardened blogger. As high temperatures are applied to metal in order to strengthen its physical structure, these heated replies are stregthening my resolve to keep on babbling... keep on with the dissemination of subjective truths ... in a phrase ... to stay the fictive course.