Fix You: Learning Lessons (the hard way)

I had one of 'those days' today. You know the type, everything seems to bit a little bit off, like milk on its use-by date; its not quite bad yet, but it doesn't taste good either.

Today I realised that the thing I want most in the world is going to hurt me, its going to work me to the ground, and I may not always be the best, hence the requirement for lots of hard work. This afternoon I copped the first major blow to my dream, it hurt. I got a mediocre reaction to a piece of work I really loved. I'd thought the story through and delved deeply into my emotions to pull out some touching moments and a lovely plot with worthy characters, it was good. I know it was good. It just wasn't good enough. I want to be a writer, it really is what I want most. However, I have a great problem in that I am not really good with criticism, I understand it and I can accept it, but I feel the negatives keenly. This afternoon I was told my piece was good, but I needed to work harder and for longer, to make it brilliant. I didn't see the good, I saw the not good enough.

I'd like to make myself better, to learn to be a great writer. I would like to feel the sting of criticism the way it is meant to be felt. I am going to liken that sting to a tatoo artist's needle, it stings and it burns a little, but if you wait it out, if you let the work go on, at the end of the painful process you could end up with a master piece. My experience of tattoos tells me that if you bail out just as it starts to hurt, you will end up with pointless marks that mean nothing. When I recieved my share of constructive criticism this afternoon (from a wise and valued source I might add) my frustration made me want to ditch my story, I didn't see a way to fix the flaws. But now I realise, my first instinct was right, it was good,  now I can see that if I work hard and wait out the painful confusing bits... it could be really brilliant.

As an endnote, I'm the sort of person that likes to have a bit of a soundtrack to my life, but today even that felt off there just wasn't that moment in my day when a tune would play somewhere near me and make my world seem ok. Fifteen minutes ago, in the last moments of today, I heard (purely by coincidence) the song that I have been waiting for all day, the one that makes the world sort of make sense a bit. I had one of 'those days' today, and by a grace that floats down in the last moments of a day sweeping away, it is just now starting to make sense.

Falling...
                ...asleep