The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: confidence

  • The World’s Best Bedside Manner

    A little over a week ago I had surgery on my wrist. I was scared silly. Mostly because I’d be all alone during my recovery, but also because it’s downright unnatural to voluntarily subject oneself to getting sliced open. I mean, seriously, who in their right mind says, “Here. Cut me, please.” You have to…

  • Teen Confidence

    I was in the DVD section of the library the other day and I heard two teenagers talking. The girl was saying to the boy in an authoritative tone, “No, you can’t check out that movie. It has too much gratuitous violence.” The boy, who was obviously trying to make an impression, said, “You’re right.…

  • Lying with Confidence

    A lot of guys do this thing that drives me absolutely up a wall. You ask a question. They answer without hesitation. They seem so sure of themselves. So you make a decision based on the information that was provided. Later when everything blows up in your face, you find out that they didn’t know…

  • “Pre-Baffled”

    God, I love National Public Radio. I was listening to a guy get interviewed on the way to work this morning. He was talking about a book he had written about understanding the monetary system. I wish I had gotten his name or his book’s name, but I was driving. Anyway, he was saying that…

  • An Absence of Wrong Things

    I’ve discovered that it’s never a good idea to try to solve the world’s problems, or even my own, when I’m tired. Or hungry. Or lonely. Or angry. Or scared. I was pretty much all of the above the other day, and I had a moment (a few hours, actually) of existential panic. I messaged…

  • “Crap, I’m an Adult.”

    Recently I was talking to my niece, who is in her late twenties, the mother of two boys, and is working on her Bachelor’s degree. I was telling her how nicely I thought she had turned out, and that not that many years ago she really had me worried. I’m so proud of the woman…

  • I’m Fixin’ To

    When I was 10 years old we moved from a mansion in Connecticut to a tent in Florida. I was uprooted from family and friends and seasons and all things familiar, and I never felt safe again. I was angry and terrified. My mother turned into someone I didn’t know. She would come home from…

  • Baby Talkers

    Personally, I could never bring myself to talk baby talk to children. They are going to need to speak properly if they want to get anywhere in this world, so you may as well start teaching them early. Sure, modify your inflection to sound more enthusiastic and get their attention, keep your sentences short and…

  • On Going Slightly Mad

    The definition of insanity, we’re told, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It could be argued that that’s also the definition of optimism, determination, confidence, naïveté, or just plain stubbornness. I’ve always assumed that the solution to this is to stop doing the same thing over and over…

  • Here I Am

    When I was a little kid, my self-esteem was so low that I actually thought that when I was out of people’s sight, I no longer existed for them. Kind of like my own personal Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, I had to be observed to be sure I was actually alive. Needless to say with…