Deficiency

That little birdie.

Years ago, ironically a few months or so before I got divorced, I wrote this thing on “the fear of not being good enough,” which honestly (if I do say so myself) was a pretty good article and at the time I had a Facebook and other social media — I’ve long since abandoned most of that, or locked myself out of it during computer upheavals — and I shared it a few times, and I had a few people locally that I used to see at events (or bars) come up to me and say, hey, that really spoke to how I’m feeling these days. The age gamut of the people approaching me was 26 to 64, so I felt like, hey, this type of shit must resonate with people.

That was about a decade ago. I definitely felt a bit inferior at the time — clearly a marriage I thought was “forever” was collapsing, which is hard to be a part of even if you’re trying to sell yourself a different narrative. I had moved down to Texas for a job, which started out fun-ish, but I got laid off at about the 17.5 month mark (right before Thanksgiving, in fact). I was doing pretty well as a freelancer in 2016 — I think I made like over $120,000 that year just writing stuff for people — but still, my life kinda felt inferior and I did spend my down days mostly drinking and then covering up the day-drinking with coffee at 5pm. Stupid little arc. I’ve gotten better on that part, mostly.