It seems like life is all about confidence. If you are confident in who you are and what you are doing, you will tend to succeed at the things you do. Not only that, succeeding breeds further confidence and from there you go onto doing bigger and better things. But confidence is a fickle quality. If, despite your confidence, you start to fail, then watch out! And just like gaining confidence breeds more confidence, losing confidence breeds more lack of confidence.

I have found that through the earlier portion of my life, I have taken many a hit to my confidence. I have now started to realize that my confidence levels at this point in my life are the highest they have every been. Its not hard to see why. I've got a big scholarship, a caring family, keen interests in several areas including my field of study, and most importantly, a loving relationship with Diane. When looked at this way, I can't help but feel a little proud of what I've managed to accomplish. I am loath to say anything particularly good about myself. Frankly, I hate boasting, and I try to keep my ego in check by realizing that there are so many people who better than me at anything that I can claim any measure of skill at.

Still, my record looks pretty. Or at least shiny. Well ... maybe not even that.

My life is an interesting story. There's a whole lot more to it than I'm entirely willing to put up here on my blog for everyone to read. Lets just say that throughout my life confidence in myself has been ... probably a lot less than is probably healthy. My low confidence levels led to moodiness, over self-examination, and low comfort levels around other people. I found myself retreating away from people who I didn't understand - which turned out to be nearly everybody. I found my niches of interests and found people who shared some of those interests and we hung out where the geeks hang out. Away from popularity.

Its taken me a long time to embrace who I am. Even now, at the highest level of confidence ever, I still find that I feel awkward around people. I find that I feel like people are judging me. Evaluating who I am based on the actions that I take. I'm pretty sure that people don't do that. But I can never be sure - and until then I find myself always careful about what I say. I feel foolish when I say something that could be misjudged and whenever that happens I find that I will closet myself up to prevent it.

Its really odd thinking about confidence like this. Lately, I've started to feel really confident in myself. Its an amazing feeling ... one sometimes wonders just how long it will last.

Heraldk