What Do Rocky and the Goddess Kali Have in Common?

Answer: Nothing really.  They are just both in this blog post.

This travesty happened in my sewing room on Monday evening:

Yes, that is a hole.  Yes, that is the final wedding dress front and center.  Yes, I asked God to strike me dead.

Mistake #1:  I forgot to use my ironing cloth.
Mistake #2:  I didn't check to make sure the iron was clean of any leftover starch or any other suspicious things.  Because of this great mistake the cloth got stuck and burned.
Mistake #3:  The iron was set too high.

There is nothing like that sinking feeling you get when you realize something very very bad has happened.  I thought I was going to pass out.  My knees got weak.  I felt like I was going to be sick.  The tremors took over and my hands wouldn't stop shaking.  (Even now revisiting this memory I feel sick.)  I was surprised that I didn't cry.  Well, I didn't cry at first.  I rushed to the scrap pile and luckily I had a little to replace the front panels.  I sat down and took a deep breath.

Then the tears came.

They were tears of frustration, of self-doubt.  Every single damned inner critic spoke up immediately.  How could you be so dumb?  You just set yourself back how far?  How are you going to fix this?  This is impossible. This is never going to work out how you planned.  This is going to be terrible.  You're a terrible seamstress.  This will never work.  You can't.  You can't.  You can't -- I was starting to spiral into that freefall.  The doubt, the negativity, was going to eat me alive.

I stood up, took another deep breath, cracked my neck, moved the ironing board to the opposite side of the room, and then took out my personal never-been-used-by-anyone-else-but-me iron.  This iron is smaller, but it does the job.  I never used anything but distilled water in it, no starch, nothing like that so I know it was clean. (Plus I double checked.)

Things needed to change.  Mentally and physically.

I found this gem and played it while I got back into the fight.  I'm so not kidding.  Shut up.

Yesterday morning I woke up with a positive mindset and this song in my head:

Last night I was able to work away, repair, and get this:

Yeah, the Wedding Dress will not defeat me.  This is not going to be like Rocky where he loses the fight, but wins the girl at the end.  This is going to be better.  This is going to be the stuff that myths are made out of.

This is going to be like me becoming the Goddess Kali and destroying and drinking the blood of all the mental demons that have attempted to murder my confidence.  If I need to I will grow 10 arms and defeat anything in my path.  I will become this:

I'm was pretty pissed off at myself and more determined than ever to overcome these stupid self-made obstacles.

Today,... today was a roller coaster of self-doubt.  I was up then down, then back up, and around lunch time I took a nose dive, but I knew all of this is just in my head.  I knew I had to pull myself together.  I cannot afford to give up.  I refuse to let anyone down.

I refuse to quit.

I'll fight until I'm blue in the face or maybe green... 'cause in the end I'm totally gonna be like Kermit: