This isn’t about this blog, my life, or my recent decision to publish something. Specifically. This really isn’t about anything specifically, just something I wrestle with all the time.
People often confuse my energy and plan-making with direction and ambition.
They’re different things. I should know.
The path to success is one of many races and hurdles. I study the races, I train for the hurdles, I practice, I build a team– and then I pretend to twist my ankle. If I can’t even finish one race, how I can finish a hundred?
I can’t– so I don’t really make big goals, the sorts that you can represent with an image and put on a board. I don’t want money, fame, attention, or know-how. Those things require a hundred races and you’d be surprised by how hard it is for me to finish even just one.
So my vision board is pretty clean:
My inability to envision goals started a long time ago, at the height of my anxiety issues.
I had a tendency to be voted in as the Most Likely to Succeed. Equally often, I was dubbed the “Darling” of a school, grade, project, office, or street.
I have no memory of anyone ever telling me that I couldn’t do something– no matter how insane my plan. Friends, family, and passing acquaintances always send me off towards my dreams with positive wishes and a good deal of faith that I’ll win.
But here’s a spoiler for you.
I don’t win.
It’s not because I’m not up to snuff, probably. It’s not because I don’t put in the work, definitely.
It’s because I chicken out.
I quietly wrestle with my inner psyche. It whispers to me the tale of the others who deserve to win more. It tells me how I can either be the darling, or be the winner, but not both– not without a conflict of interest.
I backed out of being class president when I overheard my equally capable competition say that he’d put up a good show, but that he wasn’t so unrealistic as to expect to take the popular vote from me.
I faked an ankle injury in a race rather than beating a girl who really had a reason to win.
I wish those were my only two stories of sabotaging my own wins, or even the best examples. (They’re just the least embarrassing.)
I guess you could say that I’m a recreational winner: I don’t mind winning, but I don’t need to win.
Written out like that, it almost sounds like a good thing.
But it’s not.
I trained for that race where I faked an injury. It was a race for a cause, one of those where people pledge a certain amount of money if you finish and a larger amount if you win. My win would have raised significantly more money for the organization. The girl who won, though, had a personal investment in the win that I couldn’t match with any amount of money. Afterwards, I couldn’t help but think that my loss was a loss to my trainer, the foundation, and the people who were rooting for me.
But I wouldn’t go back in time and change the outcome.
Winning makes me uncomfortable.
I know, I know. If you read this blog at all, you’ve seen “I like winning!” written at least a million times. It’s a mantra I’ve tried to accept. Blog awards are fun because they’re the exact opposite of a zero sum win. I can win. You can win. If you didn’t win, I can let you win, too.
We all win!
I’ve been trying to work on more straight forward winning. This blog is part of that journey.
I want it to be successful. I’ve gone through a long list of hobbies, none of which really stuck, and I would love for this to be the one. I see some of you with your 3 years of blogging badges, and I see my goal.
I want to be here in 3 years. I want to be able to add that vision to my lame vision board.
I know myself. The only way I’ll stick to this is if I’m held accountable. Readers keep me accountable, so I need readers. Readers stick around if there’s content, and new readers find their way to you most easily through successes.
So I want this blog to be successful. I’ll put in the work, no problem. I’ll try to be up to snuff.
But how will I know if I am when everyone only has nice things to say?
I like winning! I tell myself, but my psyche always adds on, “But I like you more.”
Whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, no matter your parents’ names, or where you were born– I like you more than I like winning.
My liking of people is very often the reason I’m liked in return. But because I’m confident that I am so often liked in return, I am doubtful of the validity of the popular vote.
Am I getting a vote because I am qualified? Or because I am liked? Am I liked because I am capable? Or because I like?
The truth is: I want to want to win, but I don’t really want to win. I want to be successful, but not at the hand of a popular vote.
Is that even possible?
Competition and popularity play such a heavy hand in everything we do nowadays.
Reading this back, I can almost hear the background music of the world’s tiniest violin. “Oh, poor me. People like me and always wish me well.” Hopefully that’s not what it sounds like to others.
Mostly this is me just explaining why I’m such a chicken.
I enjoyed participating in the YeahWrite prompts, but winning scared me. I enjoyed Trifecta until they picked me as a runner-up. The weekly writing challenges at the Daily Post are amazing, but then one of my submissions was Freshly Pressed.
So I hid. Either stopped participating, or cut down participation. I thought about publishing my posts with prevalent typos. I thought about doing them all too late to be included in the challenges.
I went out on a major limb when I tried to rally votes for the Indie Chicks Bad Ass Blogger awards. I felt like not doing that was a disservice to those who said they nominated me. It was a disservice to IndieChicks who put an intense amount of work into the awards, going so far as to email the nominees a badge.
It was a disservice to me.
Because while I’m not exactly known for being a bad ass, and a I certainly don’t have a bad ass (not with my Latina genes and American jeans), I try really hard to make this blog a safe happy town worth visiting.
I’m not an expert of course, but that’s the sort of badassery that would make a misbehaving donkey jealous, right?
Still, if I hadn’t had splotchy internet access and been in the middle of a move, I would have taken down the “Vote for me” page– because even though I put up a good front…
I’m a chicken.
Winning scares me about 100 times more than failing miserably, or giving up, ever could.
Not because I don’t think I could handle success in life, or fame, or fortune. Not because I’m not willing to put in the work.
But because maybe, just maybe, I don’t deserve any of it– not the win, not the votes, not the nomination, not the faith. Maybe I’m just surrounded by people who want the best for me, and can’t see that I’m not good enough. Maybe they know I’m not good enough, but would rather lie and make me smile than risk a frown.
When I’m running the race, and someone is cheering– that’s real. I know it’s real. They love me. I love them.
When I twist my ankle, or fake a twist– that’s real. I know it’s real.
But when I win…
did I really win? Or did I have an unfair advantage? Maybe I went a little faster because I flew on the wings of those who love me?
How does anyone really ever know if they deserve the successes that come to them?
Maybe the very concept of winning altogether is a sham.
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This my really long, really late response to my own prompt. Do you ever sabotage your own successes? Are you a chicken in different areas of your life? What’s on your vision board?
Did you catch EverydayGuru’s recent post about our psyches and how they call the shots? Check it out here.
