Doubts

I'm good at doubts.  Lots of things in life I never really got the hang of - relationships, reverse parking, fashion sense, throwing the javelin, baking cakes, multiplying matrices, and many, many others - but doubts were never a problem.

Self doubts are a particular strength. And so I write to you today surrounded by a whole host of the carping crowd.

It's back to teaching again. Tomorrow, I embark upon the longest spell of the teaching of writing that I've ever attempted - almost a whole week, no less.  I've worked hard at the plans and ideas, the exercises and the interactive bits, and think I've come up with a passable series of moderately informative and even occasionally entertaining lectures...

...but now, as the moment to deliver them approaches, here come the doubts.

It's all back to the same old question, the one I've mentioned many a time before - who am I to try to teach?  What do I really know about writing?  Why should anyone listen to me?

I'm trying to reassure myself with the soothing whisper that such feelings are only natural, a sort of "first night nerves" thing, but nonetheless I'm feeling a tad on the wobbly side at the moment.

I know I'll get through, it's something I've experienced before.  In the run up to any big gig or talk, I'll commonly feel like this. It's only natural.

But that's not helping to ease the doubts away!

So, a curiously downbeat blog for a Friday.  I shall go take some of my special medicine, the fermented vegetable products type, courtesy of a nearby public house, and talk to some of my fine friends, and doubtless I shall feel better.

But the real point of this blog?  Just to ask you to occasionally spare a thought for the performer. 

As you sit at an event, a talk, a lecture, whatever, remember the person at the front there may not always be as calm and in control as it may seem... so, if you'd be so kind, smiling, nodding, appreciating and laughing at the right points is always very welcome for a fellow human being in a position that can often feel more than a little lonely...