Being Your Own Worst Enemy - Highly Unrecommended

This is a rather embarrassing thing to be admitting in a public forum such as this blog, but I think I have to come clean here.

I am stuck on Candy Crush Soda.

For whatever reason, level 80 is kicking my ass, and I honestly am more disappointed in the fact that I have let a video game frustrate me.  I mean, it's been four weeks since I started playing level 80.  It's one of those stupid levels where you try to find all of the green gummi bears.  There are 20 small ones, and one gigantic one.  I can get the regular gummi bears, but I can't save the super huge one.

And, I've been trying to complete this level for four weeks.  So frustrating.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, it is just a silly video game.  Sure, it's a bit of a bummer watching everyone else soar past you in the game, but it's not as if you're going to get fired, or grounded, or even murdered if you can't beat level 80 on Candy Crush Soda.  You just play, use up your five lives, and try again later without any sort of worry whatsoever.

If only real life failures worked like that.

You see, I am one of those people who have a really difficult time dealing with failure.  I always have been.  I wish I didn't feel this way at all and could easily bounce back from my mistakes, but for whatever reason I can't.

I mean, if I sold a television that was accidentally put on hold for another customer, I would tell myself how bloody foolish I was and I would have so much guilt that I would think about giving them my own television to make them happy.

(Like that would ever happen, but the guilt!  THE GUILT!)

Or, if I tried to colour match an exact colour on the paint machine and it comes out completely different from what they asked for (which has actually happened), I would get frustrated and convince myself that I need to re-enroll back in kindergarten to learn more about mixing colours together.

(Like that would ever happen, but the guilt!  THE GUILT!)

Or, if I promise to do something for someone only to completely bail on it because of a bad memory, lack of skills, or being unable to keep the promise, I would be so upset that I would convince myself that these people won't want to have anything else to do with me, and I would go back home to hide and become a hermit.

(Sadly, that has happened before because of the guilt!  THE GUILT!)

In a nutshell...I'm my own worst enemy.

Worse?  I've had people tell me this.  And I believe them.

I suppose that when you get used to having low self-esteem, it makes it extremely difficult to handle it when things start going well and when you actually begin to show signs of high self-esteem.

And certainly over the last few weeks, I've had a lot of great things happen to me.  I've started a new job which I absolutely love, and I've actually gotten an interview published in a magazine.  I've been on a high and things have been going awesome.

And all it took was screwing up someone's paint order to make my ecstasy crash into levels of depression.

Logically speaking, it could have happened to anyone.  Anyone could have screwed up the colour formula.  Logically, I've only been making paint for three weeks now.  Mistakes are bound to happen, especially for someone who has never really taken on this challenge before.

But seeing how everyone else who has mixed paint seems to do it flawlessly, it sort of makes me feel like I can't compare with them, and briefly, it made me wonder if I was once again in the wrong line of work.

But that can't be true because I've been enjoying it a lot.  Paint mixing is only one part of the job.  I may not have mastered it yet, but I can do lots of other things very well.  I should focus more on those so that I can build up the confidence needed to mix paint more perfectly, and from there I can hopefully stop beating myself up and feeling guilty for things that may or may not be my fault.

It's a lifelong struggle, but I think I can end it.  I will not let man, woman, or paint mixer defeat me.

Now, if you excuse me...level 80 calls...