Between You and Me and Everyone Else

Jack in apple tree at Fishkill Farms.

I've been trying to figure out how to be awesome at everything for as long as I can remember -- first-grade readers, embroidery, baking, softball, kissing, playwriting, giving advice, dating, partying, therapy, playing house, being pregnant, "staying home," counting calories, understanding great books, getting married, being an activist, DIY home renovation, picking out Christmas trees, having orgasms, giving orgasms, talking smack, making soup, finding bargains, road trips... and of course, adapting to circumstances, coming from behind, making the most of things, looking at the bright side, understanding the message, learning from my mistakes, blazing a trail and starting from scratch.

Whew. I'm exhausted just writing that (abbreviated) list of awesome.

I see this tendency in my kid, who doesn't really want to try something if he can't totally own it on the first try. He wants to be awesome at everything, and if he thinks he's anything less than awesome at something, he practices avoidance like it's his job. ("Mama, I am reading. I'm reading in my mind.")

What I'm slowly learning is, when I get blocked, it isn't just because I may be overwhelmed by the sheer mountain of work I heap upon myself like I'm subjugating myself to hell; it's because I really, really want to be awesome at it, and I'm not sure I will be. If you and I were friends, like old friends, and we were talking right now, this is where you'd say, "But you are awesome, Annie." Then, you'd list some of my accomplishments in effort to help me see reason.

There is no reasoning with this... whatever it is. I could win a freakin' Golden Globe and wake up the next morning with a sudden case of jitters, or writer's block, or whatever the hell you want to call it, and spend the next two months reading inane comments on ONTD and listening to every cover of every song by The Cure. (I don't really believe in writer's block. It's just performance anxiety, and I'm ready for the pill. Is there a pill? If there is, hook a girl up, okay?)

There's no cure for this. I'll be struggling with it when I'm eighty-two and still have so much to say. The only solution is to cut the crap (i.e., introspective meandering) and do it anyway.

I'm almost forty, kids. Forty. And okay, my 40th is 18 months away, but the grownups weren't lying... time really does speed up when you get older. Or so it seems. And I've been awesome at a lot of things, but not everything. And I'm never going to be perfect and so I need to be comfortable with sucking from time to time, or I'll never get anything done. I'll be forty, and so so sad because I didn't do that one thing I knew I've always known I must do, simply because I was afraid I would be less than awesome at it from time to time.