Insomnia

It really smurfed missing the family reunion today. Grandma is getting up there in years and it really seems I should be ther as much as possible. For that matter, with the way Dad deals with his diabetes, time might be short there as well. Seems like every day life moves along a little quicker. Sometimes that is good and sometimes it just brings regrets.
Not that I feel like I have wasted any time. Today, between cat naps I knocked off the best part of Custer Died for Your Sins, the book that really propelled Vine Deloria Jr. into the forefront of activism. He is an excellent, intelligent writer and he really presents some interesting ideas. I do not agree with all of them but I totally respect the way he put together a well-reasoned, humorous, yet thought provoking look at why he thinks as he does. I only hope Dreamcatchers can be 10% as useful.
But time is a valuable commodity. My family has always been and always will be of utmost importance to me. I have been blessed with great brothers and sisters and parents, and, it must be added, friends. Hopefully I never get to a point where money or things of that nature are more important than family time.
Still, it took a lot of ibuprofen to get me functional this afternoon. Never a good sign. So it is probably best I stayed away from Grandma. I don't think it was anything but a heat headache or something...but then again, it is almost 2 and I am still up, so there you go.
And therein lies the question...why am I still up? It is funny...looking back at the pieces I wrote earlier that were hopefully at least mildly humorous, I note that even in a comedy piece, I annotate, footnote, cite...whatever you want to call it. Perhaps I am being overly analytical tonight/this morning, but I wonder why that is.
And I have a freshly developed theory. I think I am too terrified of being wrong, of making a mistake, of errancy. Thinking back over some of the papers I wrote last year, I note an overriding theme. Overcitation.
The ten page, 55 multiple-citation piece on Genghis Khan might be the worst example. I think by the time all the sub-citations were added in there were something like 155 citations. In a 10 page paper. Frankly, that is a bit excessive.
I do not believe it is because I lack creativity. In fact, quite the contrary. I have never had issues coming up with story concepts, plot outlines, and so forth. I have rarely felt uncreative...if that is a real word.
No, it seems more likely because if I can back up my thoughts with citations and sources, then any error lies not with me but with them. This is the curse of the historian. You can always lay the blame at someone else's feet. At least, you can as long as you have sources...
So here is an introspective type of query; am I too afraid of failing to actually succeed? I really don't think I am totally lacking in self confidence. Whenever I engage in a conversation I freely express my thoughts and beliefs. And when I review the conversations, I usually concur with myself. Yet when I am wrong I am not too proud to admit it...and it would follow I am not too afraid to fail to admit a failure. So it must be something else.
And this is what I suspect; something like Dreamcatchers or the trilogy is always something with tremendous promise...as long as it is a concept or a work in progress. Once it is accomplished, however, it is subject to the scrutiny and ideas of other people. It is no longer my project, it no longer has my stamp. And no matter how good I personally believe it is...those whose opinion now matters more than mine make the decision.
Having spent so much of my life in school, you would think the constant judgment and search for approval would be old hat by now. But it isn't. Partially, I would like to think, because I want so much to please other people.
I will cop to sometimes being a true jerk...but I always regret it and am genuinely apologetic when I see the hurt in someone's eyes. And criticisms tend to hurt for way longer than they should...as an example, I was giving one friend a back or shoulder rub and they got upset because they thought I wanted "something more"...which I did not and had not even conceived of. This minor incident has stuck with me for over a year and is always in the back of my mind whenever I am around someone of the opposite gender.
And not because I feel guilty or want anyone else to...but because it created some tense moments that I will always regret. I prefer to avoid confrontation. Again, how much of that is because in an argument I tend to speak too quickly and too emotionally...and tend to make errors? I have said a lot of things in anger I would love to take back. That look in their eyes...I just can't handle that.
Which is really funny, because almost nobody who knows me regards me as particularly emotional or "open". Oh, no, quite the contrary. People are constantly complaining because I don't "open up" and so forth...I suspect a lot of it is because they don;t know how to read me. then again, in all these cases I am the common denominator...so perhaps not.
Well, this has been a bit of rambling, incoherent nonsense that hopefully nobody plowed all the way through. Sometimes when I write I have no ending. And that is sometimes deliberate. After all, life does not always let you have a nice, tidy ending with all the loose ends tied up. Sometimes there is no answer, other times there are answers but none of them are right. Sometimes, things just end.