I've been writing professionally for 10 years, since I was 19. It's one of those situations where I can't imagine myself doing anything else; this is what I was put on this earth to do; yada yada. But sometimes my passion for writing veers into obsessive territory. There's hardly been an email that I didn't reread 20 times before sending it off. I labor over cards and notes for birthdays and holidays. Everything I publish has been read and reread and read again, then read out loud, tweaked, reread, read out loud, tweaked, reread. I have been known to let the placement of a comma or an em dash derail my afternoon. The truth is that I frequently feel a quiet embarrassment for the effort I devote to something that most people would barely give a second thought. But instead of bullying myself for rewriting the headline of a story 12 times, I'm learning to see that behavior as something else: pride in my work and in the thing I'm really good at — the thing that makes me cool and interesting and different, because I try so hard at it.
But that's only half of the story. I'm also learning to accept that I can't be good at absolutely everything. I can push myself to always be a better writer while also being content with utter mediocrity in other realms of my life — the realms that don't mean as much to me, like exercising or baking. I'll never be Padma Lakshmi, and that's OK. (Devastating, but OK.) Read on to see if you, too, qualify as a selective try-hard. And yes, this was my fifth draft of this email. |
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