Tags
AIDS, Blogging, Confidence, COVID-19, Faith, Family, Fitness, Friendship, Fulbright Program, Gratitude, Growing up gay, Marathon training and running, Middle Age, Philanthropy, Poetry, Quakerism, Teaching, Writing
Dear Readers,
My husband has endured me for more than 18 years, our daughter for more than 10.
Countless friends and family have given me their patience, wisdom, and love for many, many years that I tend to count whenever I have a birthday which was yesterday.
At the beginning of Covid-19, I was in good shape. I’ve had my best year at my job, training for another marathon — my 29th — was going well. My reflections in a major newspaper were published in March and May. Most recently, I found out that I will have four poems appear in a widely-read anthology.
But as the pandemic has continued, my riding high on confidence has dipped. I’ve been thinking a lot, reflecting on life, its trajectories, my faith. Hence, the title of this post.
Here’s the scoop: I was a Fulbright scholar, but there are Fulbrighters and there are Fulbrighters. I was not amongst the most eminent! Let’s be real. I was a teaching assistant for two years in secondary schools in Austria who studied for, and obtained, certificates in translating at a major university and wrote responses to poems by Rainer Maria Rilke in English, French, and German. I was not a distinguished professor, but a kid in my early 20s who loved poetry.
Speaking of poetry, I won many national awards as a teenager. No kidding. I then studied under the guidance of two extraordinary poets, Tess Gallagher and Hayden Carruth. One might have thought I was on my way to being published all over the place as an adult. But I was not. I struggled with accepting that I was gay. I had written hundreds of poems since I was seven years old and needed to pause, to gain life experiences, to read more, to survive during the AIDS pandemic. I began writing on the scale of my teenage years after I became a father 10 years ago. I am now a middle-aged man. I recently found out I will be published in a major Hawaiian poetry anthology. When it appears, I will send readers of this blog a link. But am I in the league with the other poets who will be included in the anthology?
I have endurance. I’ve completed 29 marathons. In the Covid-19 pandemic I’ve maintained training for an official marathon in Hawaii in July that, due to travel restrictions, will now have a small field of participants. Let’s face it: my fastest marathon ever was a 3:40. I am now thrilled if I complete a marathon under seven hours. Does that make me a true marathoner?
Lastly, my profession. I love philanthropy and believe in education, but I never have been a development or advancement director at a major organization. Instead, I’ve specialized, often at low salaries, in small, independent schools. Does that make me second-tier?
My incredibly patient husband has said often, “You have impostor syndrome,” which I had never heard of. I looked it up. The definition is “the persistent inability to believe that one’s success is deserved.”
I have often felt like a minor leaguer. You know what? I think I was placed on this earth to encourage and support others who may feel that way, to believe in themselves, to never let others make them feel small. We all belong in the major leagues!