A solid shade of grey

There are a few things in my life right now that have the slight potential to be magically fixed with a good solid dose of self-esteem. Now I'm not knocking good old-fashioned hard work, because that would certainly have to be involved too. But, in order to put myself out there for the critcism required to improve, a little confidence in my ability to acheive a level of competency would be an asset.

My overly cautious wall-flower behaviour applies, in this case, to any of my more "artsy" endeavours: writing (here or poetry) and music (playing and singing). Not every artistic thing I attempt is crap. Some of it most definitely is crap but some of it has potential. However, the trick is deciding how to best extract that potential and present it in a refreshing, enlightening and entertaining way. Oh and, by the way, the entire process is subjective.

There are some things that will just never have mass appeal in sound or print. Neither a complete lack of timing nor a complete disregard for spelling will ever get anyone very far. Beyond that, though, everyone has a different personal appreciation of music and literature.

Let me correct that: everyone should have their own appreciation of music and literature. God help those whose work instantly appeals to the masses. It's only likely to disappear just as quickly.

So, to recap:

1. Fame is not success.
2. A success is not likely to appeal to everyone and so criticism will follow.
3. Criticism is required to improve beyond an initial success.
4. Everybody's got an opinion and they're all going to be different.

This whole adventure seems to be a matter of striving toward an undefined goal of good or best, with nothing but scads of varying input from (cross your fingers) worthy inspirations.

So, to hell with black and white. Almost everything has potential for something and meaning to someone, damnit, including my half-rhymes and squeaky high E. Nothing I do will ever be solidly right or wrong, but some combination in between grey - all that counts is that I'm sure about it.