Good Enough is Good Enough

I haven’t written anything on this site in three years. I could say it’s because I have been incredibly busy running a school or that I decided to focus my creative energy on writing a collection of essays and short stories. These things are true and they are also excuses. It turns out that just because something is true does not make it a valid reason for why we haven’t done the things we said we would do. What I’m interested in these days is acknowledging facts and then wrestling with the deepest truths I can offer.

So why is it the case that this poor website with my name on it had been crafted using some wonderful tools by one of the greatest website hosts available and then left sitting here abandoned for three years? It’s because I was scared. I have been writing for years. In a storage closet around the corner from my kitchen sits a large bin with some of my first pieces of written work. There is a journal from my eighth grade year. I was a disturbed child. There’s a notebook with poems from my high school years. There are poems and short stories from my college years on the banks of the Old Raritan. In adulthood, I have published articles and essays. I even have a popular satirical essay published in an anthology that is being released this November. I’m good at this. I love doing it and yet, I have never felt good enough.

Despite what you think is the road map to success, you can work hard to become one of the first people in your family to graduate from college, earn a master’s degree, earn a second master’s degree and obtain a highly respected position of leadership that allows you to influence the lives of hundreds of young people and you can still wake up on many days and wonder if you are good enough. I am the guy who looks like he has it all together who seldom feels like he has it all together. Don’t get me wrong, I have done quite well for myself in these first thirty-something years and I too am insecure as hell about a lot of things including my own craft that I love.

So here I am, back on my own site ready to re-introduce the newest and most honest version of myself. I don’t know what’s to come of this because I don’t have a strategic plan for this project or space like I do with most things in my life. I just found the courage to get off my couch this evening and simply say, hello. I hereby accept that if everyone with access to the internet reads this or no one reads it at all, that is alright. The goal was to say something today and I did. That, for now, is good enough.