The Stagnancy of Contradictions

I'm afraid of failure.

Also, I'm afraid of success.

Where does that leave me?  A lot of the time it leaves me immobile.  It also makes me really frustrating to myself and the people around me.  I have a bad habit of coming up with big ideas, getting really excited about them, half implementing them, and then talking myself out of them.

It's not a new thing at all.  I thought I wanted to be a singer and an actress until I was 20.  And then right before graduating from a musical theater conservatory, I got scared.  Of success, of failure.  And now I don't sing anymore, other than in the car.  I can't even convince myself to sing at home, for fear that the neighbors might hear.

I was always insecure in front of an audience, but at least I could convince myself to do it anyway.  I can't even do that anymore.  It's frustrating, because singing is still something that I wish I could do more of.  If not for a living, at least as a hobby.

It's that feeling of not being good enough.  At anything.  And, strangely, the fear of being complimented if I do end up being good at it.  The fear of not knowing how to respond graciously.

The question is, then, how do I move forward?

My fiance and my family have always been supportive.  I guess I just need my confidence back.

Or I need to find it in the first place.

Bridezilla Averted

"I'm going to let you do all of the talking."

That's what I said to my fiance in the car on the way to the hotel this afternoon for our meeting with the wedding coordinator.

I'm not uncomfortable with talking.  I do it for a living.  But since this situation presented itself, I didn't entirely trust myself to keep my cool.

I admit, I may have swung really far in the opposite direction of bridezilladom.  I made a point to be as friendly and self-depricating as possible, and let my fiance do the talking when it came to the issue regarding the name of the hotel.  In the end, they will be sending us an insert to include with the invitations explaining the name change.

And as it turns out, I can't really fault them for not telling us about it earlier.  It seems they didn't actually know about the change themselves until last week, and those that did know were not allowed to say anything.  Legal reasons, and all that.

Fair enough.

And in fact, it looks like our wedding may be the first wedding held in the "new hotel."  I don't mind that at all.

Pardon My Rant - Bridezilla Edition

I swear, I'm not that girl.  I'm not that girl who has been planning her wedding since she was 5.  That girl who will yell and scream and cry until every detail is to her exact specifications.

That girl, she's not me.

But there are some days when I don't entirely blame that girl for some of her "bridezilla" tendencies.  SOME.  Not most.

I've had some of those days recently.

The venue we chose for our reception is a local hotel.  Standard stuff.  One is pretty much like another.  We picked this specific hotel mostly because the wedding coordinator there was this lovely girl who just seemed so excited to work with us.  She was full of ideas, and always prompt with responses to questions.  She made us feel really confident that everything would be fantastic.

A couple of months after booking the venue, putting down deposits, all of that... we get a call from her.  She apologetically tells us that she's leaving, and had handed our wedding over to some guy we'd never dealt with before.  It was sad, but these things happen.  Unfortunately... this guy is not nearly as helpful.  Not only is he slow to respond to emails, he also lost our room contract that ensured that we had a block of rooms set aside for our guests.  We got all of that sorted out eventually, but it was certainly frustrating.

Now, keep in mind, we still haven't actually met this guy in person yet.  We have a meeting set up with him for tomorrow, which we made a week or two ago.  And here's where I get cranky...

This past Friday, we get word from someone at the hotel who we'd never heard of that the hotel is changing its name.  No one, including our wedding coordinator, bothered to mention to us that this might happen.  Not once.  Not in any of the emails he's sent, including the emails setting up tomorrow's meeting.  And now, with invitations all printed up with the old name, ready to be mailed THIS WEEK...

I'm sure our wedding coordinator is a lovely guy.  But someone dropped the ball, and based on how he's handled things so far, I can't help but assume that it was him.

I'm gonna try to hold my tongue as much as possible tomorrow...

But it's entirely possible he's gonna put me on the bridezilla list after we're gone.

Logos, and Websites, and Legal, Oh My

I've spent the majority of this week going through the process of starting up my business.   So many little steps to complete before the whole thing is legal.

On Wednesday, I drove into Boston to have my first "business lunch" with a friend of mine who used to be a graphic designer (a little shout-out to his current business, Swamp Rabbit Books).  He'd offered to design a logo for me, so we met up to chat about what I wanted.  And I have to say, the guy works damn quickly.  Within an hour and a half of finishing lunch, he already had a design emailed to me.  And before the day was done we'd decided on the rough final design.

Thursday was website day.  I used to know some very basic HTML, but it's been so long, and my knowledge was so limited to begin with, that there's no way I could design a website.  Luckily, there are plenty of design tools for website newbs like me, and another friend pointed me towards one that was nice and simple (another shout-out to that friend at Audio Masons, who has been giving me tons of advice about starting a business).  There's a big learning curve for the whole process, and I spent all of Thursday tweeking the site.  It still needs some work, but I'll share it as soon as it's ready.

Then there's the process of making the business legal, getting it registered with the state.  Do I go with a "sole proprietorship" or a "limited liability company"?  I went with the former for now.

All in all, it's been a very productive week.  Sadly... I haven't even touched the Rosetta Stone.

Maybe I should do that right now...