Confidence

  Do you know that I lack? Do you know what the "deal" was in my church?  It was about confidence. You had to check with them all the time, and the idea was that, if they had confidence in you, you got to feel confident too, and do your stuff. I'm not wired (or trained or raised) to be able to just go ahead and do things I've thought of unless a collective of people has said it's good and I should. I can get a little burst of outrage or the like, and go ahead and do something once in a single uncharacteristic afterburner blast, but I pretty consistently lack motive power to go ahead and do any good thing I can think of. I'm old enough to know better, and I do, but I AM not better and do not function any better than that.

  You can't move forward without confidence. It's connected to faith, to the belief that what you are doing is, in fact, worth doing, and that you can DO it at all. When I moved in those circles, I was never allowed to speak or do anything at all in groups of Christian people, though they were always complaining that young men were not doing that stuff, and there were begging young men to do something, anything. In that kind of circle, people went to great lengths to step around me and ask other people to speak. I stood in Ottawa while a guy tried his damnedest to try to convince my cousin (standing just past me, me standing between the two men) to do a bible talk for everyone. My cousin doesn't do that. I was standing there, and I did not get asked to talk. It wasn't a question of knowledge or brains or talent. It was a question of trust. So, the guy who absolutely can't talk in front of a room full of people, and who has given few signs of having opinions of any kind is futilely begged to speak. Professional public speaker is always, every single time without exception, sidelined. Most of my life I have been paid to explain things to people. Yet in "Christian circles" great steps are always taken to shut me up.

  So, will my songs get recorded? Will I write things? Will I finish my first book? It's always a matter of confidence. If the idea, the inspiration takes hold of me hard enough, I slap something together in a flurry of work before I lose my nerve (that's why my second book got done), put it online or wherever it is, and then, usually...silence.  The hit counters go up, people seem to know who I am, I get ten friend requests on Facebook and two or three friend requests on YouTube every single week from people I have no idea who they are, yet not a single word is spoken or emailed personally.  Just numbers on my computer.

  A couple of times a year someone tells me I shouldn't do what I'm doing, and that I'm a bad person, a sick person who needs to be medicated, or someone who needs counselling for "anger issues." And every year or so someone tells me what THEY would have done, had they been me, and had my idea, and still, for some reason, wanted to do it their way, to suit them, for their reasons and their audience. How could my piece be made more accessible to pastors? (you know what, FUCK pastors. I've lost my belief in them.  They can all die of AIDS.) How could my song be more like what Casting Crowns are doing? I have learned that this is probably the nicest backhanded compliment I can be offered. "I like the intention behind what you did enough to tell you you did it kinda wrong and it doesn't work."

  Well, confidence is the fuel. Recently I got the confidence to not only endlessly record other people, but to get some drums recorded for my own stuff. "Why are you doing that?" people want to know. "Entering a song contest? Trying to get signed by a label? Putting together a live show?" "Why did you do it?"

  No. I wrote these songs and said these things. Maybe that stuff should be out there for people to hear. Every now and then I get a little surge of confidence (there's certainly no one in my life who "blows smoke up my ass" so to speak) and I decide to record or write something. A song is up on the Internet. Then the silence, broken, perhaps by:

  "embellish it like jim steinman would. y'know; break it up more, toss in female support vocals, and dramatize the "you've got to change" ...possibly with a children's chorus or something."

  But I don't want to do what Jim Steinman would do. I don't want it broken up more. I might get female support vocals, but would prefer high male ones. I really don't want a children's chorus or anything.  And you know what? Recording one song? It uses up that tiny puddle of confidence that collected like condensation. It has to grow back. Puts one in an Elijah frame of heart. "I only I." Other work remains to be done. Why am I sitting not doing it? The engine is out of fuel. I sit without any motive power to move forward because of an overwhelming cloud of "Should I/Can I/Will I and Why?"

  You know what would make it easier to be confident? If someone said something I did was good, or said out loud that I was good at something, instead of just asking me to do things for them.  You know?  Not just have me record them for free (and win contests with what I recorded for them), but also say something to me about me being good at recording, or that I did a good job.  Are people afraid that praising me will be like feeding Gremlins after midnight?  Will I hit critical mass in terms of confidence if I am praised, and take over the world?

  People are listening, sometimes. A brethren kid emailed once to ask if what I wrote could be used in a bible study. I don't know if that happened. I said yes and he didn't respond to my subsequent email. A (hardcore) Exclusive brethren man asked if he could adapt my website content to a "text only" format allowed by his brethren group (graphics are evil, I guess, including fancy fonts and logos) so he could share it with Exclusive brethren who'd be less challenged in terms of conscience if it were text only. I don't know if that happened. I said yes and he didn't respond to my subsequent email.

  So yeah.  The world if full of people putting stuff out there.  It is not all equally good.  One thing though: if you don't have support from others and/or confidence?  It's not ever going to get out there. You know who's confident enough to get things done?  Fred Phelps.  Mark Driscoll.  Ghadaffi.  Saddam Hussein was confident until we had him killed.