Good Enough As Is

I had pretty much forgotten that I had a blog, but driving to work today I had this overwhelming desire to write. As I drove home from work I tried to figure out what I wanted to say, and how I wanted to say it. The problem with this blog is that it is a public blog, not a private journal. That means that what I write has to be at least somewhat coherent, and filtered enough to maintain my privacy on some level. Obviously some of you know me very well, others don't know me at all. I hope that you can take something from this, no matter how much of my backstory you really know.
I am on week 5/6 of my 8 week 5K training program, and signed up for 2 other races in addition to the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving. The first is on Sunday 10/27. I was worried that if I finished training in the middle of October and didn't have a race for a month I would stop running, and I don't want to do that this time. The last time I wrote I mentioned how I need to have goals to work towards, otherwise I get bored. I'm starting to wonder if those goals are a way of saying to myself, "you're still a work in progress...you can be better...you will be better." Is it a way of not having to accept myself as I am today, because tomorrow I will be closer to my goal (whatever it happens to be), and therefore "better."
Over the past few days, I've been confronted with the idea that I might be just fine...quirks, extra pounds, glasses, dorky sense of humor and all. I was saying to my best friend today that the age 1-35 Rose has a VERY hard time believing that, because it just never seemed to be the case back then, and when I thought it was, I turned out to be wrong. The age 35-40 year old Rose thinks, "why not?" The problem is that I've known that other Rose for a MUCH longer time, and her voice is still the louder one. If I look in the mirror and think I look pretty, I feel very uncomfortable, like I'm either hallucinating or being too full of myself. I wish that I could float outside of my body...outside of my head...and see myself the way others see me. The problem is that many of the compliments I receive are from people I know and love. It's not that I don't trust them, but I don't know that they can be objective.
I am finding that my sense of self-worth is still very much dependent on what others think of me, even though I thought I was past that. More than that, I am finding that I cannot truly believe that someone who I don't know that well, and whose opinion I value, might think that I'm just fine as is. I feel like my intuition has been so wrong in the past that I can't trust it now. Being objective is not always possible, and again, the people who might tell me that I'm right are people who may be speaking from a place of love and not brutal honesty.
I know this might make very little sense, but the bottom line is that I'm happy, and life is good. I think it has the potential to be even better if I just stop thinking so much...that has always been my problem. I need to get out of my own way.