In Representing Myself, I Have a Fool for an Artist

No Carey.  The neighbors haven't caught that cat yet, though, so there's still hope it's her.

My thoughts are turning toward OryCon.  I've been invited to be a panelist again (yay!).  I'm just hoping that by then I'll be able to officially announce which issue of a certain magazine a certain story of mine will be appearing in.  It's a very, very nice magazine, and I'm excited to be in it, but I haven't gotten the contract yet, so it's best that I muffle my enthusiasm for now.

I will have some sort of card or bookmark or something to hand out, though, which I have to design.  It's funny how I can get a job to do a book cover or a promotional poster and I just sit down and do it, but I freeze up when it's my own stuff.  Human brains can be really dumb sometimes.

I don't think it has very much to do with looking foolish, though it feels that way.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that when I'm doing something for someone else, I'm aware that if they don't like it or need changes, I just do them and I feel that I've satisfied their requirements.  When I'm working for myself, I have no one to really provide outside opinions or judgements that has a stake in the result.  I can ask opinions of friends, but other than their kind enthusiasm and hopes for my success, they don't have a dog in the fight, per se.  They can't really look at it in terms of whether it represents my work well, if that makes sense.  I also fear that they must measure their response in such a way that they can be helpful without bruising my feelings, and each one of them estimates my skin thickness and aptness to bruise differently.

Or maybe all this mental contortionist silliness is just another form of self-sabotage.

Anyway, that's my latest struggle.  The good news is that I have deadlines now, and I do really well with deadlines.