Fear and Self Loathing In Las Richmond

After a long sabbatical, I've have returned to the fold and decided to once again begin my bloggage. A moment I had during my Spanish class this evening made me want to start again. At the beginning of the class, we were asked to choose 2 verbs and conjugate them. My brain literally went blank and when everyone had done them in a flash, I couldn't even write. I stabbed my pen into my hand to try and trigger some response but this didn't work. I started getting tears of despair in my eyes and I started packing up my things to walk out and never return. Thankfully,Cathryn stopped me and for the remainder of the class I managed to struggle through. I think my problem stems from wanting to walk into a class-no matter what it is- and be great at it from the get go. I've never been good at processes, at the line upon line, precept on precept, here a little there a little, slow and steady wins the race theory on achievement so therefore I sabotage the whole thing instead of snailing along. I get frustrated when I see someone surging ahead and getting it when I sit there struggling and trying to sort it all out in my head and wanting to stick pins in my arms when it comes to nought in my noggin. Perhaps I should cut myself a little slack here. I am, attempting to learn a foreign language that has 10,000 verbs both regular and irregular which are catogorized into masculine and feminine. Not to mention formal and informal ways of speaking Spanish. I have only been doing this for six weeks. Do you think I'm being too hard on myself? I long for the day when I strike a good balance of being sensitive in stead over over sensitive and level headed with out being harsh on myself and others. To be able to take constructive critism and rebuke those who try to cut me down. I was watching 'Enough Rope' this evening and his first guest was Michael Slater the cricketer who spoke of his over sensitivity, always wearing his heart on his sleeve and how he began to suffer panic attacks and finally his diagnosis with depression and I was having a silent teary on the couch as I felt this man speaking my life. I admire that he could speak about such matters without crying because I find it difficult. I long to be calm, to not have such violent outbursts, to try to develop the strength to feel good enough to walk next to others and not be afraid to take a challenge. This has been quite a soul baring blog for the first one in 3 months and indeed the first for 2005, but I guess there has to be a first one and I just need to get my ya ya's out. 'Tis late and I must go to bed. Besus para todos y respecto....