something out of nothing
i am out of words but i am never out of feelings
"Anecdote" by Elizabeth Clark Wessel
I am out of words.
But I am never out of feelings.
Once Dad and I were driving in a 1964 Plymouth.
I was eight years old.
The world stretched out indefinitely around me.
And a song came over the radio waves.
A voice from dust and rust.
Pure and quite beautiful.
We slowed down to hear it longer.
Laughed it was so sweet.
It comes back again, I promise.
My face is wet.
The house is a quiet dog.
Maybe the sick bat is waking up.
I am glad to be alive.
I am glad you are alive.
Am I allowed to say it like that?
Goodnight.
I love you. 
My inability to start any project always is rooted in my desire to say or do something significant. This is a plague that has riddled me since I had conscious thought — why do anything unoriginally, or worse, imperfectly?
As in, there is no point in my writing poetry; I am not a published author, and nobody knows my name. Every emotionally devastating and moving poem has already been written. I’ve read many. Not enough, but I know this for sure.
I have had no original experiences; there is no sweeping insight I could make about the world, or humanity, that a) has not already been made or b) has any true substance at all.
Every story has been written. Every news report perfectly executed and awarded. Every beautiful person is years younger than me now and has been deemed so by the world already. It was and is not me.
Inexplicably I am brought back to a time in elementary school when we were asked to create a mobile about the life of a famous person. Mine was Frederick Douglass. Using a plastic hanger and my construction paper, I made my mobile.
Before the due date, one of my classmates brought in his mobile on Babe Ruth, which included a replica baseball bat and decorated elements to display each bit of biographical information. Everyone was impressed, though in my edited memory I assign a look of bemusement to my teacher.
The night before bringing my own project in, I had such a feeling in my chest that as a seven-year-old, I couldn’t describe. I approached my mom in tears and said I didn’t think it was good. And in the gracious and loving way my mom would only ever be, she looked at me with such surprise that I would even think that.
My feelings of inadequacy were, of course, in vain; it was (or is it only now?) obvious that my classmate’s mom made the project herself. No second grader had the coordination to create that without a great deal of help.
Recently I heard somebody say, “Don’t let perfect get in the way of good.”
My fixation on Doing Something, on Saying Something, keeps me from doing or saying anything at all.
I started this newsletter more than two years ago to feel that I was Doing Something. Over this next year, I am recommitting to you, my audience, as a gift to myself.
I want to believe that everything I do for myself, if not good, is good for something. These little steps I must believe are dragging me toward the faraway goal I set as the stubborn child I will always be.
For anyone who has read one entry on this blog or more, has subscribed just to up my numbers, or who may have even enjoyed something I’ve written, I am grateful. I am fighting every day to rationalize myself to myself, and your presence is such a powerful opponent to my imposter syndrome.
I wish you empowerment in the next year to pursue the things you dream of. This probably means nothing to you, but it means something to me, and some part of me must believe that that means something somewhere.
– AF