The vague, yet unmistakable, feeling that I am doing everything wrong.

I can be thrown into a spiral of doubt by just about anything. Looking into the mirror at my tired face spirals into me being ugly, into being ugly on the inside for even worrying about being ugly on the outside, spirals into being untalented as well, into having nothing to offer the world, into I'm doing everything wrong.

And then you may find me all dressed and ready to go -- coat, scarves, hat, boots -- lying prone on the floor, staring at the ceiling and muttering about failure.

"But everything was going so well," you say, "just moments ago you were singing about the snow and all ready to go out for hot chocolate and art."

Yes, it was all going so well, and then I started listening to myself again. I should not listen to my own opinion of myself, it's really terrible.

I am a happy person: singing, clapping, skipping down the street in my bright red wool cape that makes me look like little red riding hood.

I am a brave person: I smile at strangers, ask drug dealers for directions, walk into blind alleys looking for underground concerts in the middle of the night.

I am a sad person: haunted constantly by my inability to affect or even comprehend the atrocities that are perpetrated on this planet.

I am a depressed person: thinking about myself in endless, deepening spirals of doubt and pain. And then nothing.

I am a person: conflicted, afflicted, affected, defected, detected, defeated, seated here on a couch in Berlin, thinking this piece of writing too solipsistic to be of interest to anyone else, and too banal to be of interest to me.

Thinking I may post it on the internet anyway just because I am the type of person that will ask a drug dealer for directions, and skip and sing, and cry on the floor, all at the same time.


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This was written after receiving 6 comments and several emails about my blog.

I certainly did not mean to sound whiney or overly sad. While I do often succumb to depression at this time of year I wrote this blog to communicate rather the momentary spirals of doubt which afflict me. My thought was that since most people go through the same doubts someone mind find solace in my words.

I wasn't fishing for compliments or to be told to stop whining and "do" something. I just wanted to get over myself out loud - as it were.

And then I played music.

And now I'm going to the opera.

p.s. Thank you for loving me back!