Of Self-Doubt and Insecurity

Every once in a while, you come across a story or an event or a commercial or whathaveyou wherein you realize someone has taken an idea you once had and run with it. Not that they stole it or anything like that. No... they just happened to think of the same thing, and instead of sitting on their hands or putting it off another day or believing it's too silly to pursue or having an attack of insecurity and self-doubt - they just did it.

In this case, it was an idea of my husband's. He had talked a year or two ago about developing a CD of songs for each president - an idea which was linked to the play we co-wrote with some other friends back in 2002 while with The Neo-Futurists in which we wrote a short play for each of the presidents (43 Plays For 43 Presidents... I've mentioned it before).

Today I was driving home and caught a story on NPR about a trio of musicians who had the exact same idea - and have recently released a series of songs... one for each president this country has ever had. The album is called Of Great and Mortal Men.

What was sort of funny was they went about the writing in much the same way we did the plays: dividing them up evenly and making sure each person had a relatively balanced mix of the well-known and obscure.

I have ruined my potential Christmas present to Andy by writing about this, because he was putting in some fencing in the backyard when this story was on. But it seemed worth mentioning... primarily because it connects to something he and I both struggle with in multiple aspects of our lives: self-doubt, low self-esteem, and the many ways in which that hinders our creative, interpersonal, and career pursuits.

I'm not sure why we doubt ourselves. I'm not sure what makes some people feel they can conquer anything and some too afraid to move. Whatever the reason, we're on the doubting end fo the continuum... certainly not so low in confidence we are unable to find/create/enjoy successes in our lives. But we let a lot of good ideas die.

At least in this case, it seems the folks who made the dream a reality did a really good job at it. I look forward to hearing the rest of the album some time.