Not Quite Good Enough
I have come to the conclusion that I simply do not have what it takes to be great.
“No one’s ever asked me that before.” The subject of my first big interview — someone with an Emmy nomination, a proven expert in their field whose work I also happened to genuinely adore — paused. I’d caught them off guard. I hadn’t meant to do that. It was a question I almost cut from my list. The conversation had flowed directly into an open space where it would fit perfectly, so I asked it.
Silence. Then: “No one ever talks about this.” A brilliant stream of words I’m glad my voice recorder caught, because I was too mesmerized to write a single thing down in that moment. “Thank you for asking that,” they said at the end.
I spent, in total, about 14 hours putting together that interview from start to finish. When my editor published it, about 100 people in total read it, and it now lies dormant beneath the hundreds of stories I’ve published in the years since then.
I’ve never forgotten that interview. The rest of the world has. Most people never even knew it existed.
This experience is so common that opening with it is, admittedly, a risk. Most journalists do good work that largely goes unnoticed. Some of them do great work that the internet might catch onto for a day or two before moving on to the next thing.
After nearly 12 years of this, I have come to the conclusion that I simply do not have what it takes to tell the kinds of stories the majority wants to read. The sensation that suffocates me with this epiphany is the one thing I haven’t been able to put into words until now.
Journalism was never my plan. It wasn’t anyone’s plan for me. Most of my classmates growing up assumed I couldn’t talk, because I never did. I floated through every grade lost in notebooks, building my own imaginary worlds instead of participating in the real one. I wasn’t interested. My peers judged, labeled, and bothered me, so I shut them out. I found refuge in only three things: making music, reading books, and writing stories about all the people I wanted to be but couldn’t mold myself into.
At some point, my hunger for storytelling and need for human connection landed me in the student newspaper office at a tiny Midwestern college you’ve never heard of. Writing novels was not going to spark any hope of a career for me. My advisor suggested exercising a different writing muscle I’d deliberately never moved. I figured it might look good on a job application by the time I graduated, so I agreed to try.
Of course I fell in love with it. Of course I did. The things we spend our youth running from are often the very things we were always destined to fall headfirst into when we grow up.
I was not a great journalist. Interviews made me nervous. I procrastinated on deadlines because even the slight possibility of an editorial note left me paralyzed with anxiety. But I started to notice something no one warned me about: I liked asking people questions. I liked turning interviews into conversations. My curiosity became my strength.
There are many traits that define a successful journalist, and I’ve been cursed with several. Stories are the lens through which I observe and comprehend the world, and writing things down is my way of processing things I don’t yet understand. I am eager to please and terrified of failing, so the moment I recognize the potential impact of someone’s story, I don’t often walk away until that story is told.
It took me years to realize I also possess something many others in my field don’t: In my constant and often unintentional quest to connect with people, strangers find it very easy to trust me. I can, therefore, ask them questions many others can’t. For me, interviews are a dance through the surface-level queries that eventually lead us to deeper, more insightful territory. It is my favorite thing about the work I do — giving people space to talk about things they don’t otherwise get an opportunity to talk about.
It also took me years to realize none of this matters.
In this industry, asking insightful questions, adopting the work ethic of a gifted only child (of which I’m neither) and a love for connecting with people through stories isn’t enough to stabilize your career.
The worst part is that I know exactly what does, and I simply don’t conform to the equation.
Growing up, I always thought being likable, skilled, and driven could create the formula necessary for a successful career as a storyteller. So I pushed myself to be always nice, always learning, always productive. I believed that if I smiled enough, improved enough, and published enough, the people who mattered would notice and reward me.
The people did not notice. There was no reward for good behavior.
In the past year, I’ve conducted some of the best interviews of my career. My pride in my work drives me forward. No one is listening or reading or taking a single thing away from it, but for some godforsaken reason I keep doing it. Because I love it. Because I cannot get enough of it. Because my soul exists to do this work and thrives in the midst of it.
I get paid in experience and engagement and vibes, and I guess that’s normal, expected, applauded. I’m good at what I do, but not so good that my career also gets to be my job. I’m good at what I do, but for every 100 jobs I apply for, I’m lucky if even one human being looks at my resume.
I’ve given over a decade of my life to this work, work I love, work that makes me feel alive in a way nothing else can, and I have so little to show for it. I’m good, but others are better. I play nice, but that doesn’t get you anywhere. I’m skilled, but unimpressively so. I have published over 3,000 pieces of writing on the internet, yet I’m barely scraping by on a freelancer’s salary because I haven’t published 4,000 or 10,000 or 20,000.
Loving your work doesn’t guarantee stability in an industry that doesn’t care about people the way you do.
Being good at something doesn’t guarantee income, or a safety net, or lasting recognition, or any of the things you need to survive in an ever-changing hurricane of ad revenue, AI, and location-locked job opportunities.
Just because you ask questions no one has asked before, questions that make people think and leave them changed, doesn’t mean you’ve earned the best your industry has to offer.
There are a dozen reasons I will never be great. A handful of those reasons I was born with and cannot change. Journalism doesn’t care about that.
Maybe it’s my fault. For not doing more to overcome my obstacles. For not doing whatever it takes to climb the ladder, for not trying hard enough. For not accepting less compensation than I’m worth, for not working through burnout or saying yes to more, or for refusing to step over other people to go after what I think I deserve.
Maybe I’m good, but not quite good enough.
Maybe I never will be.
