Reality Check

I read somewhere that among people who land it big, whether as an artist who achieves sudden recognition or an actor chosen for a big role, or a worker promoted unexpectedly, there is a tendency to feel as if their good fortune is undeserved. No matter how smart or funny or talented they are, they have this (sometimes unconscious) fear that they will be found out to be merely normal. There is a constant underlying strain as they wait for people "find out the truth" and their new world to crumble around them.

I struggle with this a bit. Not that I have made it big in any traditional sense. But I have this unspoken nervousness that my boss will discover that I'm not as good at my job as she thinks I am, or that my craft stuff or photography is really not particularly interesting to anyone but me. Even as I was taking my morning constitutional (another 2 miles today, for a total of 10 this week), what kept running through my mind was the scene from The Quiet Man where Maureen O'Hara exclaims to John Wayne that 7 miles was just "a good stretch of the legs." That's 7 miles each way - which makes my 2 mile round trip less of an achievement and more of a pitiful excuse.

Yesterday my boss told me that I need to document more of my efforts at work. I tend to put in more than the required hours, and privately use this to justify the occasional unproductive mid-day distraction (hello, Ravelry?). I regularly stay late and work through lunch and take on extra projects which can't be billed to a client, but suddenly I'm fighting off guilt for not being a super-paralegal/office manager/fill-in assistant/gofer/etc. And the movie that's playing in my mind this time is The Devil Wears Prada, where Anne Hathaway has been dealing with the impossible demands of an unreasonable and uncaring boss, is scolded for not "really trying," and then somehow pulls it all out and becomes super assistant. Yet another way in which I do not resemble Anne Hathaway - or the movies, for that matter.

(And did you notice that I got through that whole "expectations, internal and external versus reality" thing without once using the word "diet"?)

It is what it is, and I have to keep reminding myself of that.



On the knitting front - I've picked up the yellow wool, and should be working madly on the last wingtip for the Tree of Life shawl. But the Meg Swanson newsletter yesterday included a comment about "Indian Corn Stitch," which got me curious about it. And when I saw the red/white/blue "stripes" cotton at Hobby Lobby, it gave me as good an excuse as any to do just one more cotton hat for the farmer's market. So, I give you the patriotic Indian corn hat. Same recipe as before, but with 3 rows of seed stitch, then the Indian corn stitch broken up by 3 rows of stockinette in between, and then the standard star decrease. Hopefully someone else will like it, too.

ETA: Indian Corn Stitch: YO, knit two, pass YO loop over two knit stitches, repeat. Work 2 or 3 rows of stockinette, then do it again. Sorry!