Better Late Than Never

I’m writing the first lines of this article thirty minutes after it should have gone live. It likely won’t be finished until hours later. I’ve written fifty consecutive articles that all went out on Fridays at six a.m. No one told me to do this. I don’t get penalized for turning these in late. Technically, I don’t even have to do them at all. I’ve used these weekly posts as a discipline to help me produce short articles every week, even when I don’t feel like it. This week, I kept waiting for inspiration. It never came.

I thought about writing about the literal money pit in my backyard. We discovered that we may have disrupted the natural flow of a spring when we got a skid steer stuck a few months back. This makes sense. It’s probably why the puddles of water haven’t dried up since the first of January. Not a huge deal, but it’s not an article.

Next, I thought it might be interesting to write about the predatory nature of lending companies and the 200-plus phone calls I’ve gotten this week after we applied for a home equity loan. Perhaps I could write about the stupid argument my wife and I had last night and how I dropped the ball. Our stress levels peaked after finding tiny winged termites on our living room floor. My wife is a saint for putting up with me.

I then thought about talking about all the wild dreams I have every night that make me crash after work from exhaustion some days.

Again, these ideas amounted to a few anecdotal sentences but not an article per se. I didn’t want to write about the military again because even though my stories are all true, I still feel like an imposter writing about that stuff sometimes, given how minuscule my experience was compared to the community I’m surrounded by. Considering the proximity to Easter, writing about faith would be more prudent for next week.

So, I went to bed last night feeling like a failure. Not that anyone cares when or if these come out, but that’s not the point. I failed at something I set out to do. I’m also being crushed by the pressure that only I place on myself—the irony.

I had a heart-to-heart with my mom the other day and admitted that most of my ambition and drive come from my deep insecurity and feeling as if I’ve never been enough. She confessed to feeling the same way. I guess it’s genetic. At least I come by it honestly.

I still feel immense pressure, as if I am at the bottom of the ocean. This feeling isn’t eased by anything. My mom reminded me I have a good job, even though I don’t love it. I’ve also written books and articles that have been published. Additionally, I have a vast knowledge of nature facts, which makes me a walking encyclopedia. I also have a great marriage, and I tend to take many other “successes” in my life for granted.

I treat those accomplishments as baseline things. Those things feel easy—even when they aren’t. I don’t consider them accomplishments because they are things I should be doing.

The other side of that coin is that I often feel like a failure in all those areas. I’ve misidentified animals; I’ve yelled at my wife; my books were only self-published, etc. I see my accomplishments as failures more often than not. It seems I’m striving for perfection that doesn’t exist in the real world, no matter how hard I try to force it.

I often compare myself to best-selling authors, scientists, and National Geographic photographers, which leads to a feeling of never being enough. Those goals may be unrealistic, but that’s where my sights have always been set. Those people put in the work, like I’m trying to do now, and earned those accolades. I will get there one day. If I don’t, well, that’s okay too. It doesn’t mean I’ll stop striving to reach those lofty goals. Comparison is a killer. I’ve got to stop that and just run my own race.

As with the title of this article, most of my accomplishments came late. I hope there are more coming later still. Better late than never has become a mantra for me. I’m a perpetual late bloomer, but I eventually bloom.

So maybe this week is a reminder not to take myself so seriously. It’s okay to not live up to my self-perceived standards all the time. The goal is to keep moving the ball forward. Sometimes, I have an off week that I can’t fake my way out of. Some weeks, I’ll write an article about writer’s block and how I didn’t write one on time. Voila, I barely scraped by.

Better late than never…

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Stan Lake is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker currently living in Bethania, North Carolina with his wife Jess and their house full of animals. He split his time growing up between chasing wildlife and screaming on stages in hardcore bands you’ve never heard of. He has been published by Dead Reckoning Collective, The Havok Journal, Reptiles Magazine, Lethal Minds Journal, and many others. He filmed and directed a documentary called “Hammer Down” about his 2005 deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in with Alpha Battery 5-113^th of the NC Army National Guard. You can find his books, collected works, and social media accounts at www.stanlakecreates.com

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.