Theatrical Muse; Doubting yourself

Where do they get these questions? Who do they think they're addressing them to?

Oh well, I might as well give it some thought. I do have doubts, at times. Everybody does, except perhaps those pathetic little jobsworths who practically run by clockwork, doing some routine, non-challenging task that they know they can do, because nothing ever changes much in their lives until the day that they start failing to even follow their own limited routine. That's a bad example, too - some of them truly doubt themselves and they can end up getting heated about it.

Firewalled against all who mean harm.
See the words, obey the charm.

I've written about two of my own experiences already, the long wait before I started to develop any magical talents at all and later, when I brought back a queen and faced an even longer wait to find out if our gene-mechanics had worked it out right. (Nobody wants a Operative with my talents living near them. Humans tend to remember the combustion bit as the big inconvenience but singing the truth can really rock their little worlds.

It can certainly rock their societies, so my kind work away from home and bring in various profits - and the gene-shapers work out what species we get to marry to turn those talents into something socially useful in the next generation. There are families that'd be wiped out as a kind of hygienic precaution if we didn't use exogamy. In any case, the most powerful families could be inbred to hellandgone without it.)

As for self-doubt - there are operatives that just can't do that - the conditioning towards exogamy doesn't work for them or the gene-shapers are wrong and the kids are worse than the parent. Even if they get past the first problems some operatives can’t take the stress of getting involved with mortals.

Then, almost anything can happen on tour, I could tell you stories - but not in a few hundred words. Any of those problems could have hit me, some of them did. Of course I doubted myself at times - and of course I went ahead anyway, most of the time. There wasn’t a lot of choice about that.