Enter the Dragon

So much of today is about tests.  The truth of my reality right now is that my work is going swimmingly.  More than that in fact.  My corporate masters, at least those that interact with me, are falling over one another to praise themselves for hiring me and letting me do my thing.  There are two more corporate masters (of my corporate masters no less), are going to get the full Punch effect this week and while I admit to a little nervousness, for being the zoo animal on display, I am pretty confident in the equine power I bring and the stuff I know.  The dragon has entered. 

This is hard for me, as you can probably tell from my tone.  I am confident, but I can't take compliments.  In fact, I deflect most of the credit onto my team for their efforts, and struggle to take any on myself.  It is just something I don't do.  I focus more on what I haven't done, what depression has robbed me of, of certain skills and abilities that I don't know if I'll ever get back, and not on what I've done, through skill, guile and leadership to make revolutionary some basic concepts.  I am seen, for right or for wrong, as a thought leader on a space I honestly knew nothing about 6 months ago, and others have been working in for years.  In my blindness and self-deprecation, I feel like I could have done more, that I am in some way fraudulent, because I've coasted in relative terms, to what I consider I should be capable of.  I really need to stop that, because it gets me nowhere.  I've done this and I need to take credit for it.


Tonight, at dinner, between singing my praises, I was asked by the big boss what I want to be when I grow up.  Strange that at my 40+ years that I'd get that question, but he knows that I have the horsepower to do a hell of a lot more than I've done already.  I'm the poster child for the people they want to hire and he essentially told me that I can have whatever role I want.  I am trying to emotionalize that statement, and not see it as too much of a paternal validation (he's younger than me, so that's not hard).  But I also need to see the value of what others see in me.  I need to accept, emotionalize it and feel valued for what I've done.  I want that very desperately, to be happy for myself.