Good Enough.

What do you say when they say you aren't good enough? Do you explain how many hours you've put in? How many nights you couldn't sleep because your mind was filled with worries and ideas? Do you explain the friendships broken, the loneliness, the relationships strained because you focused too hard on your work? Do you describe the countless failures, the disappointments, the let downs, the mistakes and how each one crushed you more than the one before? Do you detail the multitudes of victories, small and big, and how far you've come, how proud you are to see yourself grow out of nothing? Do you beg them to consider the times you doubted yourself, and the times others believed in you? 

It's hard being the "middle child". I've succeeded just enough to be considered accomplished by some, but not quite enough to be considered accomplished by those who can take me further. Unlike some of today's emergent youth "social change prodigies", I didn't start when I was 9 (though had somebody just shown me the way...). I don't have hundreds of followers all over the world. I haven't raised millions of dollars (though if raising money was my main focus, so help me, it would have happened by now).

I keep saying, it's not too late, not by a long shot. I have plenty of time to make a big impact. I'm still young. But why haven't I done as much of these other people yet? I keep trying to figure out what the problem is. Do I lack the inherent intelligence? Do I lack the skills? What is my deficiency? Did I come from the wrong home? The wrong city? Was I born in the wrong time? Do I spend too much time relaxing? Are the moments I allow myself to breathe too much? Do I pay too much attention to people I care about? Not enough? Is my face, just, wrong? Am I seriously not working hard enough? What if I worked harder and I still didn't get ahead faster? If I work hard and succeed, will there be an unbearable cost?

I'd like to blame others, and circumstances I couldn't help. I'd like to blame Marvin for being manipulative and holding me back. I'd like to blame being poor as a kid. I'd like to be mad at people in school who never told me what the Key Club was. It'd probably be easier if I could just blame something other than myself, but I can't, really. And I'll have to get older knowing that anything I didn't do, anything I didn't accomplish, was because something was wrong with me or that something I was doing was wrong.

Mr. Butler always said, if you spend too much time looking behind at what everybody else is doing, by the time you turn back around they'll have whizzed past. But I don't feel like I dwell on this that much. Only when I get a little sting, a little reminder that I haven't changed the world quite yet, do I feel the need to express these things. I don't spend hours milling away, wallowing in self-pity. I work. I work hard. 

And it is hard work. I picked a doozy. "Promoting Volunteerism and Helping Others" isn't like helping the homeless or protecting the environment. In this business we have to be pioneers. We have to figure out what to say, what to do, how to be, the exact right combination of things and words and images that will help others to act. And it's different for every person. What takes longer, catching 1,000 fish and giving them out to the hungry? Or teaching 1,000 people to fish? I have to keep telling myself that, not beat myself up. This takes time. I've always been the type to want results now with everything from physical fitness to finishing school. 

So can I just give up, because it's hard? Duh, of course not. And I never will. But I can write about it, express these things here. I have nobody to talk to about these feelings who has any hope of understanding. But maybe here. So forgive me for the rant. It had to go somewhere.