Counting on Success

I wrote this on March 21st:

Just feeling so crazy excited about life and so capable of making necessary changes.  Was feeling optimistic when I got off work and then I thought to myself that by the end of the week, with two scary presentations, I would not be feeling optimistic.  Then I thought, how fucking depressing and defeating.  I will conquer still!

I’ve been thinking for a while that if I’m going to take writing seriously, then I need to change the way I think.  There are a million things that could stop me from writing, a complete lack of time chief among them, but what’s really stopping me from making progress is that I’m not sure if I’m good enough.

Recent experiences related to my success in school brought me to a new level of clarity.  Don’t let me tell you any differently: I love studying theology.  I love school. I love succeeding at school.  I love debate. I love, even, talking in front of people and sharing what I know.  But, all of my insecurities about whether I’m smart enough or have anything unique to offer replace my excitement with dread.  I find myself thinking that just getting through it will be good enough.

There are a couple of problems with this.  First, I’m capable of a lot more than just getting by and the facts, if you examine them from outside of my head, speak to that.  I do really well in school.  Second, things that could be thrilling to me are instead dread-filled.  And, third, thinking you’re not good enough is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  You procrastinate, because you don’t want to face your own potential failure.  You don’t try as hard as you can, because you always want the excuse that you could have done better.

I don’t want to make this all seem more serious than it is.  I am confident at the same time that I am doubtful of my abilities.  Sometimes I even think ridiculously arrogant things that I would never say out loud.  Maybe that’s what makes this all so complicated.  The more success I have, the more weirdly perfectionistic and fearful of failure I become.

With fiction, it’s different.  There’s this same pressure as in academia to be something special, but my abilities are largely untested.  I’ve been writing fiction since I was 16, but I’ve only written a tiny portion of what I could have, and almost no one has read any of it.  Fiction is hard and most people suck at it for a really long time.  Getting published is also really hard.  Really really hard.  And you’re never going to make any money at it unless your J.K. Rowling or Steven King or Stephenie Meyer or John Grisham.  The odds are stacked against me.

But, if I’m going to keep marching down these difficult roads–one to a PhD and the other to published novel–then I’m going to have to stop expecting failure.  I’m going to have to start counting on success.  I’ll be disappointed sometimes, but I need to stop trying to protect myself from disappointment by always expecting the worst.  I’ll be okay and in the meantime I’m only hurting myself.

What does it mean if you wanted to do it, but never did?  Or even had the talent to do it, but never did?  It means nothing.  Potential isn’t anything to brag about.  I’d rather run head first into my limits.  At least then I will know where they are and I’ll have created something in the process.

I’d love to write with no concern for whether I was producing anything good or not, but it’s impossible to subtract my ego out of the equation. Not as a means of self-delusion, but as a means of compensating for the defeatist attitude I call realistic,((This is a reference to a favorite quote of mine: “Doubt has replaced hopefulness—and men act out of defeatism that is labeled realistic” —Students for a Democratic Society.))   I’m going to assume that it is good.  Decent at least.  Nothing to be embarrassed about.  Will get there one day.  I’m going to kick this imposter complex to the curb and stick my neck out by writing as much as I can and sharing it with whoever is reading.