I Hate Self-knowledge - or - Sad About Sockapaloooza

So all day yesterday, the hard-workin' Alison was taking signups for Sockapaloooza.

And all day yesterday, I hemmed and hawed, hawed and hemmed. I kept going back to her blog, staring at it for a bit, then going away. Once I even clicked on the link to the signup form, stared at it a long while, then went away again. Finally, with about 38 minutes to spare, I talked to a friend of mine, who told me what I knew already, but just needed to hear from another person to affirm that it was true.

So I didn't sign up.

Yeah, that's right. I didn't sign up.

Man, I wanted to. I mean, I saw Alison's initial post about signups coming up and was all, "ooh ooh ooh!" about it. And I've seen all the cool socks people have knitted for and received from their sock pals. I'd even started to think about some other coo little gifties I could chuck in the package for my sock pal. Dudes, I was Ex.Cit.Ed.

But then when it came time to sign up, and I looked at Alison's understandably stern reminder that signing up meant making a serious commitment to knitting a pair of socks, and keeping Alison updated on your progress and I realized that this... this was a situation spectacularly ideal for turning me into a raging butthead. And I've been trying to cut back on turning into a butthead these days.

See, the problem is, I do fine doing stuff when nobody knows I'm going to do it. But when I commit to something - when there's someone out there, even a very dear friend or a beloved nephew (to name two people suffering from my jackassery on this stuff right now), who is expecting something from me... oh, I just turn into a schmuck. For reasons unknown and undiscovered despite a decade of off-and-on therapy, I dig my heels in and refuse to come through. Why? No clue. It's just this idiotic, self-sabotaging thing I do. I've actually managed to get better, over the years - I used to just be completely awful about it, now I'm just really really bad.

Regardless, though - the fact that my nephew is still waiting for his Christmas hat and my best friend is still waiting for her Christmas present proves to me that I'm in no way ready to start participating in things like Sockapaloooza, no matter how much it's going to break my heart for the next three months to see all the other Cool Kids knitting away for their sock pals, all excited about yarn choices and patterns and all that good stuff. Even though when everyone else is receiving their sock pal socks in the mail, I'm going to be all, "Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat worms" because there won't be a pair of socks arriving in the mail for me.

It's just tough nuts for me, because I'm not going to set myself up to disappoint yet another person - this time a perfect stranger.

But man... I wish I didn't know myself this well, you know? Like... I wish I could just sign up, all excited and carefree, and then be all shocked and unaware when I go all WereJackass on the subject. Or even better, if I didn't even /know/ I'd turned into a WereJackass. If I could just go along, make the usual excuses as to how the world got in my way and it really "wasn't my fault!" and yadda yadda horsehockey.

But I can't. I do know myself this well, and so... sigh. No Sockapaloooza for me. I'll just have to enjoy it vicariously through everyone else's blogs. So, you know, take lots of pics for me, will ya? Thanks.