I've been a little...off...lately. I've been in a really good place for quite a while now, but the last few weeks, I've just been feeling blah. Maybe it's the old "I'm not where I thought I would be at 30" feeling creeping up. I just can't shake the feeling of knowing I should be doing more, but not wanting to. I'm just tired. I'm tired of trying to get somewhere and not having it happen. For the last ten years, I've been trying to become an editor. I went back to school, I quit my steady full-time job for two part-time jobs, I took an internship in New York City that didn't pay and that cost me too much to go to, I took on some freelance work. I'm just tired. It's not working. It's not panning out. And I'm feeling like a failure. I want kids so badly, it hurts. Ben and I talk about it almost daily. But, I can't have kids before I have stability. And I had stability. And I gave up all that stability for...this... For working nights and weekends, for living in an apartment that's not big enough for a family, for wasting my time at a job that makes me feel incompetent, and another one that I love, but doesn't pay the bills. I didn't even come on here to complain. I came on here to make myself feel better, because writing is therapeutic.
Last week, I had a two-day team building thing at one of my jobs. As I always do, I went into it dreading the experience. It was going to be two days of listening to people tell me how to work as a team, forcing me to do group activities with people I don't know. I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a really great experience. I got some networking in, and met some really great people. One exercise they made us do was to come up with a list of things we want to accomplish and why we haven't been able to do that. One of my goals was to get published. And one of the reasons why I hadn't accomplished that yet was because I don't have much confidence in my writing. It's not just my writing I lack confidence in, though. It's my work in general. I want to be an editor so badly, I could cry. But, every time I go in for a job interview, I know there's someone out there who can do it better. I know there's someone who is better at it, more experienced at it, and will be more confident in their editorial decisions. There is someone else out there who will be able to stand up to their author on the changes they've made. And most importantly, there is someone out there who is not filled with debilitating self-doubt.
With this list, we were then assigned to pair up with someone we didn't know and get feedback from them on how to balance out that reason for not succeeding at our goals. I said I wanted to be able to have more confidence in my work. I told my partner that when someone tells me I'm a good writer, I assume they're being nice. No one's going to tell me it's bad. I have never once believed someone who told me how good I was at writing. There have been times when I've written something, and then gone back and read it later and thought, "wow, that's really good, I wrote that?" But, that's where it stops. One person told me I need to reach out to more writers to get their feedback, because they'll be honest. I admitted that I probably don't ask other writers for their feedback, because I know they'll be honest. Another person stopped me and said, "okay, I'm going to get deep right now. You need to figure out where that feeling comes from. What happened that made you feel that way?" I know what the answer is...but, I can't blame everything on my mother, can I? :)
As a kid, I was always writing. I remember around third grade or so, I started writing songs for every holiday. Just silly songs, that I would sing to myself in the shower. I also wrote a book about the dolls in my dollhouse and got such praise from my teacher that she showed it to the school principal. That was the last time I really remember feeling good about my writing. From there, I moved on to poetry. In high school, I was your stereotypical sad sack teenager, who obsessed over boys and wrote sappy love poems. In eighth grade, someone on the bus stole my poetry journal and read them out loud to the bus (he had no idea those poems were about him...). I quickly told him they were a friend's. He responded with, "really? They're actually pretty good." But, the damage was done. I was mortified. Some time during my junior year of high school, I took a poetry class. I wrote a poem in that class that I was so proud of, I actually showed it to my mother. That had never been done before. I had never shown her a single sentence I'd ever written.
She laughed.
Yes. Laughed. I was crushed. Destroyed. Devastated. And she had no idea what she'd done. There was a particular line in the poem that she found funny, clearly because she didn't understand metaphors. It was something about old wounds turning to scabs that I have to pick at until they become scars. I stand by that line. For a sixteen-year-old, it was a good line. And it made sense in the context of the poem. Mom didn't get it. I pinpoint that as the day I lost confidence in my writing.
That doesn't mean I ever stopped writing. I just stopped sharing it with people. I have kept a journal since I was nine years old. I don't write in it as regularly as I used to, but reading over them occasionally helps me get back in touch with that girl I used to be. That sad, confused, frightened girl, who had no idea what she was doing, but just wanted to love and be loved. I took writing classes in college, and did okay. I went on to get a bachelor's degree in English, but skirted by with C's. I now have a master's degree in Publishing, which I absolutely adored. I've done the blog thing on and off for several years now, but I can't say I've ever really taken it too seriously. I've tried a few different angles, a few different topics, but I don't find my life very interesting. I just blog about life. I always feel like I need something about my blog to set me apart from the rest of them, but I don't know what that is. What sets me apart? I wrote a beautiful piece about Ben last year and his stepdad read it and said I was a great writer (he said it to Ben, not to me). I attempted to write a novel a few years ago, which I let Ben read (before we were dating) and he said, "you're definitely a better writer than I am." I've had people tell me over and over and over again that I'm good at what I do. I'm currently a copywriter at one of my jobs and my boss tells me in every one-on-one that I've "got the chops." So, what do I do? How do I build myself up to the level where everyone else puts me? I'm smart, I'm educated, I'm funny, I'm open-minded, I'm passionate, and I'm strong. But talented? I don't see it. Maybe ya'll can help.
(Here's the poem my mother laughed at-written 5/3/02 for a creating writing class. It was about my almost-boyfriend at the time, who eventually became my ex-husband. I was 16 years old.)
Salt
I never understood the phrase "your eyes are like the ocean"
Until I saw the ocean in your eyes
But, perhaps yours are deeper than any
So much more transparent
There's so much more under the surface
The waves are so relaxing...so gentle
Carrying away anything that gets close enough
But, lately the tides have been changing
I've got my own personal ocean
It gets deeper by the hour
And I'm flooded with emotions
No longer transparent, but translucent...
And those waves...now so damaging
So terrifying, overtaking the world
My world
But still, they carry away everything
And they drown out anything in the way
All the "salt" in your eyes
Being poured into my heart
Anything I bothered to open, filled with your salt
And how it burns...yet at the same time
It heals...
And soon, I'm left with only scabs
But, I must pick at them
Until
They become irritated again
And become scars
Constant reminders...
And I know I'll get caught in your ocean again
But next time
I'll get stung
By something I never even saw coming
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