Between Pity Party and Book

Bertha Wegmann, Despair. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. Not much of a post today, I fear. I’ve somehow fallen into that deadly pit otherwise known as comparison of self to others. On a weekend when one friend is celebrating a marriage and an old frenemy is on TV promoting her book and looking great doing it, instead of feeling unmarred happiness for them both and going about my day, it’s all I can do to drag my envious self to the screen or page. None of the cheer is helping me get my nose to the grindstone while facing a mess of notes and the overwhelming sense of just how much work will be required to pull together a book in its very early stages, an offering that the world absolutely does not need in order to survive or thrive. That unhealthy tendency to use others’ (apparent! apparently uncomplicated!) success and contentment as a standard for evaluating one’s own well-being is a large part of why I avoid social media. You never know what’s going on behind those posed…