The psychiatrists are often made fun of, because they too often seem to blame the mother or father.

I grew up with a mental illness condition before even the term mental illness was coined, and long before people knew A.D.D wasn’t just a kid being irritating on purpose. Because of this ignorance, I lived a life that must have been irritating to my parents, and so I was a disappointment at times. I was told so, frequently. I wasn’t living up to my potential, made even worse by the fact the results from the IQ test were crazy high. If I’d been stupid I suppose, I would not have been so disappointing.

The project I’m working on now is an unusual example of how my need to please often overshadows how fucking amazing I am, and instead of beaming with pride over the work I’ve presented, I feel inferior and I read into the reactions of others as disappointment, even if this isn’t the case. I have been working on a website for a community group. They’re not a business but the people in charge are business people with business instincts. The method they use to talk and make decisions is one that is foreign to me, since my experience is office enviroment is limited primarily to single days every once in a while where I show up, solve a problem and leave.

We design can take months, and my interaction is under a different kind of scrutiny. For this particular project, I tool initiative without being asked. I started working on a redesign of their existing site on my own time, in hopes of presenting a near-finished project they could either accept or reject, but in either case, WordPress has the background structure to allow for visual change separate from content change. Even if rejected, the work on the back end would be of value.

I should mention, I knew this project would be without compensation. I am a member of the “club” and this was to be my contribution. 

I am a horrible judge of reactions in cases where I am presenting work like this. I’ve usually pre-guessed a negative response and so whatever they say I hear with that bias. I believe this is probably more significant than even I imagine. I want to believe that they’re happy with my work and effort. It doesn’t help that all I hear are comments on things to change. Because I sprung it as a surprise, and the universe rushed me into a reveal before I was expecting due to a catastrophic failure of their existing system. They came to me about to ask for help with a new site and instead I pulled back the curtain and showed them I was already almost done. 

There was a brief moment of excitement, but pretty much instantly they were in rush mode to get this thing online as the active and live site for the organization so the only comments were for changes. The things they didn’t like, or did;’t want. The worst comments were the ones that stemmed from a corporate mind. A great deal of the creative aspects I was so proud of were ripped out to make way for the mass market that can’t take a joke, or doesn’t respect anything even remotely beyond gray.

EVerything they say seems to have become a personal attack and at the end of the day I feel emotionally drained almost as much as the web site. I am gray.

One shade, not 50.

Their old sysadmin questions everything. Their President makes requests to change some wordings to even farther dumb down the content as if our readership had just bought their first computer. She offers suggestions to assist in some troubleshooting using an inflection that makes me feel she thinks it’s my fault. I was working the redesign on my own company server and it was subtle, but there were several comments that made me believe they thought their own box was superior and that might be an issue. Everything was negative from my first reveal.

I want to say I’m exaggerating the negativity but since these are my feelings, it’s hard to say. I’m certain there is probably gratitude and respect in their minds, but the emotions I feel are the ones I use when I store these memories. As I’ve said in my writings over and over, reality is a concept, but we are the curators of our own universe and how I interpret the world is my reality. 

I blame my Dad. I’m sure he loved me, and was proud of me, and might talk great about me to others, but the only memories I have, are of him yelling, and getting frustrated because of my failures.

Today I did kick ass work, straight from noon till night and the website has some really really awesome features. It does things nobody would have even conceived of a year ago, and even today would be almost impossible had I not found an amazing design tool. It is however not so easy to master, so in my head, I sence their disappointment. I hear negativity where there may be none.

I’ll get over it. I’m sure I’ll find some praise when the public sees my work.

I wrote a bit more here, but my tablet rebooted and the auto save was a bit behind so now my mood is split and I’ll just end. I know it’s in my head but I still feel like I’m failing these people instead of making them happy. 

Web boss Dad isn’t happy. I’ll go to bed sad. At least nobody yelled.