criplling self doubt/ player hate.

sunrise
Originally uploaded by notnato.

It's not often that I get all livejournally around here... but just this once, ok?

There are a couple of blogs about Japan that I read regularly, with really different perspectives on things, marxy and momus. I comment (a little too) regularly on both and have some dialogues back and forth with the blog protagonists from time to time. They both seem like really fun people.

But beyond their blog contexts, both are pretty impressive people. Momus has travelled the world making a cosmopolitan living on his art, and is 90% of the time, a really fascinating thinker. Marxy, well he's still young, but he's just finished writing his (marketing or commerce) masters thesis in japanese, and has relased 1 album with another on the way. He's also the recipient of a monbukagakusho scholarship for his graduate studies in Tokyo.

Like I mentioned before, I'm interested in these scholarships, and getting an even higher education in Japan. Both for the sake of a future in Japan and for my own purposes. So I've been running around the internet today looking for whatever information I can find.

So tritt die Selbstzweifel ein. I just don't think of myself as on that elite level in any regard. Looking over the application forms for the monbusho scholarships, I can't help but think of how I compare, or don't compare. I can be proud of my writing or japanese language ability or aptitude in whatever particular field in isolation, but put it on the table to compare to folks who are really getting it done, and I lose all confidence.

In simpler terms, I'm a player-hater.

Breaking my ass last year studying japanese and working on all manner of self-improvement has made a difference, but I'm still uncomfortable with competitions I won't win easily. Let that be the goal for the coming year. Stop the player hate.