Craving exceptionalism and embracing who I am

It’s a Yallfest kinda weekend 🌴

What an incredible weekend in Charleston! I flew down Thursday afternoon and spent the next two and a half days writing, chatting with incredible friends whom I already miss, and sitting in panels that were by turns inspiring, hilarious, and motivating (the banned books panel in particular was an incredible call to action that I deeply appreciated).

Most of this newsletter was written beforehand, lol, but I hope you do enjoy some pictures and the reflections I share. They’re quite personal!

1. From the heart: on adequacy

2. From the camera roll: Yallfest in photos

3. From the page: why do we write and where do we find the joy?Leave a comment

From the heart 💗

I’ve been thinking about writing this for a while; it is, shall we say, an evergreen topic for me. The idea of adequacy — of whether I meet the arbitrary benchmarks I’ve set up that are meant to showcase what is good enough, what falls short. As a kid, I would’ve hated that it’s come to this. “Mediocre” was always my greatest fear, because I wanted to be exceptional, to be talented, gifted, special.

Let’s not lie, I still want to be exceptional, talented, gifted, and special. The big difference is I had a lot more confidence back then, and now I’m convinced I’ll be lucky if I cross the adequacy threshold at all.

I fear this in just about every aspect of my life. Am I an adequately good friend? Am I doing an adequate amount of work at my job? As a writer, am I…decent? Am I giving the world enough of me to justify my existence in it?

There it is.

It always comes back to that for me, doesn’t it? The fear that I shouldn’t even be alive to begin with, that I began this life with a deficit that I’m seeking to pay back by being exceptional. And if I don’t succeed, if I’m not exceptional enough, I simply don’t know how to carry on.

It’s really kind of shitty, to live with the idea hanging over my head that I shouldn’t be here. That I’m a blight on the surface of the world, draining energy, resources, time, and love and not giving enough back in restitution.

The thing is, if any of my friends ever confessed to feeling a similar way, I’d never stand for it! Because I know that not only is it unreasonable, it’s also not how…life works. Like, we don’t owe restitution for being born. That’s ridiculous!

But something inside of me hangs tight to this belief. I feel like a broken record always talking about being raised evangelical, but in this case I do think that contributes to this feeling. Because I was raised to believe in “original sin” and that I needed redemption from the moment I was born; I no longer believe in that but the concept has its hooks in me. And without believing in a god who died for me, I haven’t achieved redemption yet.

So maybe the answer to all my problems lies in further deconstructing that faith 😂

For serious, though. I think a true answer is that I need to offer myself some more grace. I am exceptionally hard on myself, and maybe if I treated myself with just a hint of the softness I know my friends deserve, I would have more room to breathe — to create — to take risks — to break molds.

So maybe I can still be exceptional. Exceptionally kind to myself 😉 And with the extra space I have from offering myself grace, maybe that’s where I’ll achieve something great.

Or not! Or I will just live, and create, and love my friends well, and that, in and of itself, is exceptional.

From the camera roll 📸

From the page ✍️

There’s this piece of writing wisdom that I see often, either given as advice from authors at talks and in interviews or just parried about social media. It says that writers must write only for themselves with nary a thought to publication. The feeling I’ve always gotten from this advice is that thinking about publication or audience or, god forbid, the market, while writing cheapens the art of it. At the very least, it makes it less enjoyable.

And here’s the thing about writing advice, even the pieces of it that I dole out: your mileage may, indeed, vary. So maybe that wisdom is helpful and perfect and motivational for others — good! I’m glad.

For me, it isn’t. Because I’ve known since as far back as my memory goes that I wanted to be a published author. This aspect of my dreams is more ingrained in me than just about any other personality trait. Which means that nearly every piece of writing I’ve ever penned has come from a place of — I hope that someday someone sees this.

Honestly, the first journal I ever kept in fourth grade, I opened with a dedication to my future readers1. Every book I’ve ever completed, all seven of them, I’ve done so in the hopes of securing an agent and eventually publication. Every essay, every poem, every article, I’ve hoped at least one person — ideally more — would lay eyes on.

I started a short story recently and was convinced I was writing it “just for myself,” and “for the joy of it.” And within 25 words I was researching places to publish short stories, lol.

Here’s the thing. There is joy to be had in sharing writing. Like, why else would writers put ourselves through the hell that is publishing (be it trad or indie, it is hard), if we didn’t derive some joy from the result?

I think we should embrace whatever joy we find; if the greatest joy for you is in the creation itself, the creative process, the pouring of words onto the page, I think that’s beautiful and I think you should treasure that joy and do whatever you can to safeguard it. If, however, you find more joy in sharing, you should know that that’s not lesser in any way. And chase that joy.

Always, forever, chase the joy.

Alla prossima 👋

That’s all for this week. As ever, if you love this, do feel free to let me know and/or share with a friend. It means the world to me to hear from y’all.

There is an ongoing genocide in Gaza. So many US voters are in favor of a ceasefire — not a four-hour a day pause in the slaughter only to resume later, not a brief cessation, but a true end — and our elected officials aren’t keeping up their end of the collective bargain that a democracy should be. We need to be vocal about where we stand, and what the consequences will be of continuing to ignore us.

My heart is with those who hurt.

My heart is with you.

I love you, friends.