I’ve written about this before, but the other day, I was flipping through a notebook of essay ideas and notes and realized that many of them have sat unwritten for nearly 5 years. I started flipping trhough them–mainly because I was procrastinating on writing–and wound up feeling a weird range of emotion.

Okay, that sounds more dramatic than it actually is. It’s just that I’ll get in these moments where I want to write something but don’t know what, so I go searching through lists and notebooks ful of stuff to see if I can get inspired. But I also feel a little embarrassed that in all these years, I have so much that has not borne fruit. The result i sfeeling guilty or getting down on myself for “not achieving enough.”

This, of course, is a dumb ay to think or feel, but somewhere along the line in my formative years, I started to overvalue keeping score and that led to a complex fueled by perfectionism. I hate to always blame our culture, but I think that was a huge factor. I grew up in an area of privilege-a mostly white middle-class/upper middle-class suburb within a very good school district. With that came expectations of your path in life, especially if you were singled out or labeled as the “smart” kid. There were gifted and talented programs, honors programs, summer enrichment coruses, all sorts of academic recognitions, and while I know that collaboration and camaraderie were encouraged, there was also a huge competitive streak.

Of course, it may have been me more than others, but I was constantly comparing myself to my classmates. Where were we all ranked? Did they know something more than I did? What awards were they winning? What opportunities were they taking? I know I internalized a lot of this, but I also know I was immature and didn’t do a good job at covering up my attitude. I don’t always remember being an asshole, but I’m sure I was at times.

Still, internalizing it did more damage than anything, and that is what led to me keeping score of myself. Friends would have success and I would be genuinely happy for them but also berate myself for not being just as good or not having accomplisehd enough. It’s exhausting and has fed so much of my mental health issues–anxiety, depression, inadequacy, insecurity–that I am trying to work on it.

Looking at unfinished essays or notes for books I would love to write feeds those problems no matter how inoccuous it may seem. I flip through a notebook and say to myself: “This has a good title” or “This is an interesting idea”, but the punisher part of me comes out to say “Look at every opportunity you have wasted and look at how you will never be enough because of all of these mistakes you have made.” You know, forget that so much of writing–or anything creative, really–is having ideas and picking the one out of 100 that actually works. It’s that all 100% were not accomplishment abdges or money in my bank account is why I feel like every other wannabe fake “writer.” In the end, why do I even try?

My therapist, when I talked to her about this keeping score, noted three things that I already know are true. First, I am the only one keeping score. econd, nobody else is thinking of me this way more than I am (in fact, they don’t remember half the shit I dwell on). Third, I need to see the good in what I do or have done. Yes, find my joy.

But finding my oy can be hard sometimes, especially when there is so much that was left sitting there and you have either been taught or conditioned yourself to measure life by your failures.

Again, “But you didn’t ….” is a terrible metric to live by. That line of thinking is also a hard habit to break. I mean, you can tell yourself that you are consciously going to look at what you ahve done or accomplished and can start doing that, but what if it feels fake? Or what if you have often conditioned yourself not to talk about accomplishemnet for fear of being considered arrogant or conceited?

Shit. It’s no wonder I dissociate on my iPad all the time.

I’ve decided to try and work through this with a small project. I am going to tear up the stuff I dont want to save. Yes, that sound ridiculously simple, but considering how much I have saved over the years and how hard it’s been for me to let things go, it’s going to take some time. But there is something to be said about being different than you were even five years ago or hving a different attitude about a topic (whether or not you care about it, agee with your points, see the need to do it).

I started with the most recent notebook I have — that noteook that I started five years ago with a bunch of essay ideas. What I found interesting was how many of the ideas in there actually came to fruition in some way or another. No, I never actually wrote and published a book of essays, but a number of them are in a draft form on my thumb drive or were posted to my blog. It’s actually encouraging in a way, and while I did pull a bunch of pages out of the notebook so that I can work on some of those ideas, it felt good to get rid of it.

Now on to the bigger thing: thirty years’ worth of creative writing journals, beginning with the one I started in the fall of 1994 with the semester of creative writing I took in my senior year of high school. I have kept them in boxes and swore that I wouldn’t thow them out, but I think it migh be time to dig into them the same way I did my personal journals. I know there’s going to be pain and embarrassment (if I had the balls, I’d contact Mortified to see if there’s anything worth using on stage). But I enjoy the reflection and nostalgia that has come with personal archaeology. Plus, this gets more crap out of the house.