Self-Ashtualisation

   The day before yesterday, when I was working really hard to focus on drafting my covering letter to the second literary agent on my list, my obsessive thought tightened its grip on me, deftly chaining me to itself. It breathed down my neck, nagged at me to come on and just do what it wanted and glared me in the eye, all at the same time. Its chant for me to start acting on my dream to become a voice over artist sounded like an excited but deadly whisper, so still yet so loud – and before long the draft of that covering letter in front of me seemed entirely drowned out by the incessant mental noise. Indeed, I could not concentrate, at all, even though I did much, much, much more than try.    As I discussed in this post , that ghostly mental chatter was the same one that had made me regret my decision not to intern at a radio station, for years on end. As a highly sensitive person, I had never minded thoughts like it. In fact, we coexisted in a sense, since I’d learnt to accept al

   ‘OK… Wow… What has happened to me,’ the mental echo I will be hearing as I write this and long, long after the completion of this reflection is inevitable. I just have to accept it as well as the fact that whilst I am still me through and through, I have definitely evolved for better or worse, though hopefully the former – one is never the best judge of oneself indeed. The past two days have been both overwhelming and thrilling – more perhaps the latter than the former, for my horizons are once more expanded beyond my wildest beliefs. Yes, as the title of this post has suggested, I have made over fifty new writer and reader friends in just two days – friends with whom I’ve had stimulating virtual conversations on two of my favourite pastimes, reading and writing, of course.    Social networking was never my forte. I believe it is still not, however because openness to experiences is one of my strengths, why not embrace the opportunities to be more open indeed? It was with these

   Whenever I shared my life progress with her, a mentor, keenly interested in my growth, would often respond, ‘Your learning curve is huge.’ As a highly sensitive individual, I would often analyse and reanalyse the meaning of those words. What I have found over the years is that even now, my views on what they mean keep changing, depending on what’s happened in my life and how I’ve responded to those events. For instance, if I feel down in the dumps when something, for want of a better word, bad happens, I would perceive ‘your learning curve is huge’ as extremely patronising and condescending, the way a cocky adult might say, ‘Grow up and buck up, kiddo,’ or ‘You’re still young and inexperienced. You know nothing,’ to a child or a younger adult. Occasionally, I would even regard the sentencing sentence (yes, me and my daft pun again) as a backhanded compliment, something along the lines of, 'Ooh! You've learnt an unbelievable lot for your age, haven't you?' When some