I'm Not Good Enough

The vast majority of my recent articles have been focused on books. What books I read, my thoughts on topics I read on them, reviews from great books.

Thing is, I don’t write so often. Perhaps an article every two weeks if I’m lucky, and I feel most of them haven’t been very creative lately.

Once upon a time when I started this blog, I’d write about anything that came to mind. From ”The Moon Is Made of Cheese” to role models, intuition, short stories, learning, cheesy stuff. I’ve written way too much about writing itself.

I’ve had this blog for 5 years. 5 years! I’ve kept it and taken care of it for longer than anything else I’ve ever done. I’ve published 120 articles, written more than 130 thousand words, with 30% of them unpublished. That’s the size of a book, with an unpublished novel by its side.

Yet I feel like I don’t have anything to say.

It’s easy to talk about books, review them, discuss the ideas of others, but why should I put my own ideas out there, and who would even care? What do I have to say that no one else has said before, even better than I possibly could?

Stephen King said in “On Writing” to: keep reading and keep writing. That’s all anyone that aspires to be a good writer can do. Keep on going and maybe one day you’ll be good enough.

I love when someone says they liked one of my articles, it’s fucking amazing. My wife practically decided to go out with me when we met based on what I wrote. It changed her view of me from being a silly boy into someone with a brain. Hurray for that.

I cringe by reading my earlier articles, but I love that I could be so bold as to write about stuff I knew nothing about! Aren’t we all in the same boat? Not knowing anything?

By far my most popular article is about “the importance of role models”. I wrote it based on Jared Leto from 30 Seconds To Mars. I was rather obsessed with the guy. Nowadays I mostly listen to music while working, and don’t have any “role models”.

Is this just a tirade of me not feeling as adventurous or creative and my younger more naive self? Yes. Is it an attempt to be more candid and go out of my comfort zone? Yes. Is Google going to care? No.

Even now as I edit this, I’m cutting out chunks of irrelevant bullshit that made sense when I first wrote it.

I remember reading about Impostor Syndrome and thinking “Poor losers feeling sad about their success”. My blog isn’t even popular and sometimes I feel like an impostor, pretending I’m smart and writing about smart people stuff.

But at the end of the day, who cares if someone reads any of this or not? In 100 years no one will remember any of us, the internet will have forgotten all about me, my blog and everything I’ve worked hard to create.

So create! If no one will remember, then at least make sure you have a good time while at it. Enjoy the damn moment, suffer, cry, laugh. Because we’re all gonna fucking die one day and it’s much better to have spent time creating something useless than not creating anything at all.

Only you can care about what’s important for you and by caring I mean to go and do something about it!

Everyone sulks, feels miserable and stares at blank pages wishing to write something truly good for once. Doing nothing is easy, walking the walk is hard but it’s the only thing that’s worth it. So go and do fucking something.

Stop staring at your bloody phone. Close those useless apps that are siphoning your time and energy and replacing it with depression and envy. Open a book! Listen to a podcast! Stare at the window and think about how cool it is that we’re not killing each other through stupid wars anymore, or starving, or something.

What am I getting at? Nothing! This article is just like life: a bunch of unexpected garbage that maybe makes you smile before dumping you into the next roller coaster of “you gotta do something with life, man!”

Fuck whatever is making you doubt yourself. Fuck your cat for not letting you pet it. Fuck social media. Fuck your bio-chemistry for giving you the blues. Fuck-the-police.

Go and be happy. More book reviews coming up soon, duh.