Dr. Feelgood

Today I find myself in what is for me unfamiliar territory:  I’m brimming over with self-confidence.

This is weird.

Most of y’all know by now what a generally insecure guy I am, and many of you probably know a few of my stories that explain how I got that way.  (Here’s a big one.)  But contrary to the typical, I can and occasionally do ride on crests of positive self-image, and I just happen to be on a big one lately.  Several waves of separate origin have just crashed together (constructive interference, for my fellow geeks) and resulted in an unusually big one.  And me, I’m just a-floatin’ on top with a big ol’ grin.

1)  Workouts/weight loss progressing very well.  I fit into my “skinny jeans” again, as the gals say.  I put ’em on this weekend and it felt pretty damned good.  I may actually have to buy a smaller belt by the spring.  Hitting those goals are a great spike in my self-image.  Yesterday’s workout was just an illustration thereof.

2)  Possibly connected to the above, I had a gal call me “cute” a few days back, completely out of the blue.  That sort of thing virtually never happens to yours truly – in fact the only time anything remotely resembling it has happened in the past several years was Kim and Suzy saying I was hot over on No Butts a few months back (and thanks again for the boost, ladies).  Unexpected female attention will do it every time.  Particularly for us geeky dudes.

3)  Work, while not miraculously cured of everything that irks me about it, has been going fairly well lately.  I got the initial green light yesterday for a project about which I’m very excited, so that’s very cool.  Besides that, I was at my professional association meeting on Friday and realized how good I feel in that company.  These are folks that a few years ago made a very (very) minor exception to their constitution to allow me to take the leadership of the group.  When I’m there among, I realized, I feel like I’m well-known, well-liked, and well-respected among my peers.  Always a recipe for some warm fuzzies.

4)  You guys.  Lately we’ve all had our ups and downs, mostly downs (various bugs haven’t helped!), but we’ve all been right there for each other to throw an arm over a shoulder and pick each other up.  I know I’ve had various virtual hands pat my back and tell me it’ll be okay over the last month or two, and every one of them has been worth gold to me.  Now that I can see daylight again, I look at all that help when I was down, and help we gave each other, and just think how kickass our little community has become over what, a year?  Two, max?  Let’s face it, people:  We, collectively, are the shit.  Hands in, “Badasses” on three!

5)  Last but farthest from least, Dys has changed her hormones in the last several weeks.  (Yes, I received permission to post this.)  She’s raving, and I’m raving, about bio-identical hormones.  I know you gals don’t have to worry about that yet, but someday you’ll thank us.  The clock on our sex life has been turned back a good solid 10 years in the last two weeks.  And I don’t even have to BEGIN to tell you what that does to somebody’s outlook on life.  Particularly a born horndog like yours truly.  I’m sure my own improved self-image lately has a little somethin’ somethin’ to do with it, too.

The trick is, I’ve learned, to take this validation and do something positive with it rather than wait around for the next bout of insecurity to hit.  Because despite the little voice in my head that says “the wave will crash, the other shoe will drop, and it’ll all be over,” the truth is that while yes, the wave will crash, there’s no rule that says it has to level out back down where it was.  I don’t have to be that insecure guy, and I won’t be unless I make/let myself.

Time to grab hold of the saddle horn and make sure I don’t get bucked off, eh?