and then I do—

I'm a writer, but I don't know what kind of writer I am.

I tend towards the high-falutin', the introspective, the self-praising and self-pitying, because if you write what you know, then you write about yourself. I write about baseball in any number of ways, but none of them seem to really fit. I'm a writer who can go weeks without writing - cursing my inability to write while not bothering to put ink on virtual paper.

I'd like to be the best, but the distance marker keeps moving, and I wasn't going to make it there anyway, so what kind of writer am I? I want to have that fountain of ideas, thoughts pouring out my fingers like the benedictions of some blessed something or other, but I get blocked. I get blocked, and I get frustrated, and I write self-pitying lunacies that no one reads (and nor should they). I'm still not sure which side of the parenthesis to put the full stop on, as well.

I read so many great writers and good writers and writers of meaning and purpose and thought and weight and I wonder what am I doing here? All these filled niches and where do I belong? I can't be the best baseball writer, there are at least ten already out there. I can't be the best feminist-thought-sports-ramble writer, because there are so many stronger and smarter women out there being that before me. I just have this little blog, this little thing, this little voice, and when I'm afraid I'm losing it I don't speak out, I just let it shrivel up inside me, ineffectively breaking up my thoughts into 140-character missives that splash and sink, like pebbles in a pond.

Maybe, as writers, we were better off before page views. There is so much more to read now, which is both great and terrifying - what if I am good, but am lost in the noise of those who are better?

See, though, there comes in the Southern and (semi-)Evangelical and Female Upbringing - the immediate urge to quash the "I am good" beneath the "No, not really, don't ever think that I'd be willing to promote myself, I'm just nobody." Because I'm not good, not compared to the giants I look up to.

I don't know what I'm looking for, in writing, other than the fact that in so many ways, I'm looking for the terrible thing I've been looking for my entire life - someone to validate my existence in some way that sticks, that this comment or that one or this retweet will be the thing that finally tells my heart-sick soul that "You matter!" "You belong!" I think too much, though, and I know that it won't happen, so I don't write because inaction is better than failure.

and then I do—

I do write, and I make myself hit "publish" and I move on and I try.

I come not to praise, but to bury.

There's a thin line I walk, between being supportive and wanting to be the best.

I'm intensely competitive. I always have been, whether in music or in sports or in life. I want to be the best, or I'll be nothing. As I've matured, it's gotten easier, little by little, to moderate this driving urge, to take "the best" and turn it into "very good," to not let it get in between me and friendships, me and feminism, me and the right side of the line.

Every once in a while, though, it gets the better of me. Instead of being happy for someone, I get jealous. I let that little voice - the voice informed by experience and chaos - tell me that if she's going to get that, then I'm never going to. I wasn't first, so I'm not good enough. It's poison in my ears, and it's counterproductive.

I used to be one of those people who wanted to be the only. I wanted to be the only woman writing for a major site. I wanted to be the only woman "scouting" at Frisco games. I was incredibly lonely, and yet, educated by that societal pressure that tells women that there isn't enough room for them, I wanted to be alone. I've tried to grow up, tried to be a good person, tried to be supportive and helpful and mentoring, tried to turn my anger outward instead of inward, but sometimes...sometimes I'm just not strong enough. Sometimes I can't be happy when someone gets an opportunity I wanted, even if it means that another woman is carving out space for themselves in such a difficult landscape.

I'm not writing this for your pity, or your scorn. I'm writing this because I sat down to work on an important piece that is due sooner than I'd like, but couldn't, because my heart was sick and sad and jealous.

It's a journey, I know. It's not the most difficult journey, and I've got plenty to be happy with, but that's the curse of it. Right now, I'm not happy because I know I'm not the best, and I don't know if I will be happy because I won't ever be the best, but right now is not the future.

Some day, I'll be good enough for me, maybe. Some day, I'll be at peace with other's accomplishments. Today, though, I'm not good enough.