Not Good Enough
I'm going through another crisis of feeling sub par at one of the few things I really love. This is a residual feeling from my past that I never fully healed. I often think I beat it until it haunts me again, like today. The feelings are fewer but still there.
There has been a lot of discussion on the journal list I'm on about the Diarist.net awards. It comes up every so often, usually coinciding with the announcement of quarterly winners. Oddly enough, this round just happened to flare up at the same time I went to read through the winning entries and thought to myself, "I'll never be on here." I don't think that because I'm not one of the popular journals. I think that because when I read through those winning entries, I know I'm not that good.
At times I thought it was a matter of exposure. I never went out of my way to pimp my journal. I list it at the bottom of my emails, and I link it at ThreeWay Action, but I never joined Clix, and I never bought banners or anything like that. I haven't advertised. I relied on the few links I put out there and a hope that I would be good enough that people would spread the word. That hasn't happened. And even on the days I get plenty of hits, most people only look at one page and leave. I suppose that's common, but if I were really that interesting or that good of a writer, more would have come back. In the ten months I've had my journal, I've only gathered the same number of regular readers. When I was listed in Al's Lives On-Line (see February 2001 for mine), I got lots of referrals, but no one stuck around. I was somehow linked through journals.about.com for my decluttering work, but nothing there either. It seems to me it's simply a matter of quality and a captivating life at this point. I certainly don't have the latter, and it appears the former is lacking as well.
I am feeling sorry for myself. I was always a good writer in school. Friends, family, teachers, and peers always commended me on my writing skills. I was good. But that's all I was� good. I wasn't exceptional. Like a star high school athlete, I had no real chance of making it into the profession. I came to this journal looking for some sort of validation, that maybe I wasn't as mediocre as I thought. I have yet to get it. I don't think I ever will, and that's a letdown.
Those awards reminded me of that. All those writers are better than I am. There are other writers not on the list that are better than I am. That's a whole lot of people who are better than I am. But for some reason, that doesn't make me want to quit. Obviously, I wasn't just in this to get validation. There is something more here, and it's that aspect I have to seize and encourage.
I suppose it's my age-old desire to be popular that pains me. As always, I have to find something more. I have to figure out why it's become so important to me, so I can dispel it. I'm in the process of writing a piece about that need to be popular when I was in junior high, but it's very painful, and it's not coming easily. I never realized it still hurt me so much.
As strong as I try to appear, as strong as I try to be, there's still an insecure girl inside me. Getting awards isn't going to solve that. It's a quick fix to hold me over to the next form of outside approval. Someday, I have to find that approval in myself.
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One Year Ago Today:
