Artistic anxiety

I awoke this morning, threw on an old shirt and let my anxiety take over.

???It's that everlasting feeling of being a struggling English student with writer's block and a potential career that's just two miscues from joining the blogosphere.

???Right before I began writing for The Spectrum, I went through a time period where I looked at my peers and could not help but recognize how much more accomplished they were than me.

???They had books, and movies and popular Web sites.

???I had three half-written screenplays, a bunch of disappointing short stories and an excuse to just leave the written world behind.

???Downed power lines and a lack of transportation drew me to my laptop during the October storm years ago and I couldn't help but hope to just scratch and claw my way through something. Anything.

Nothing.

???I tried reading and, while the thesaurus quickly became my dirty mistress, I still lacked any semblance of written coherency.

???My failure to write had become an embargo I just wanted, needed, to be lifted. And the more I thought about it, each breath became significantly heavier.

???It was so bad I just stopped trying. I gave up writing.

???Imagine just sitting down in front of your computer with every thought and idea you wanted to showcase - and being frozen.

???Each and every word would never be good enough. Every phrase restructure would never sound right.

???My efforts moved from striving for perfection to just attempting to have one sentence displayed on the page.

???It lasted all through October, through November. Thanksgiving rolled past, break started and the wall of misfortune lasted all the way until Christmas.

???My girlfriend gave me a special green notebook, and inside was a little note she wrote me. But what she gave me was more than just a note - it was my swagger, my confidence back.

???I came to the realization that no matter how hard I pushed myself to write, it just wasn't going to happen until it was ready.

???It still took a week before I could glance at my computer screen without rapidly tapping backspace; but as time went by, my writing was slowly regaining its poise.

???What was bothering me wasn't just a case of writer's block; it was this incredibly overwhelming anxiety - fearing my way with words would never be good enough.

???That following semester, I joined The Spectrum, leading to the creation of a portfolio featuring works ranging from awful to mediocre.

???Each article molded into the next, and the one after that.

???Oftentimes I would outwit my own anxiety, writing articles thanks to a security blanket manufactured out of clever banter.

???But not this time.

???Sitting anxiously, waiting for these final words to paint themselves across my screen, it would be pretty easy to just give up and end this column with a joke.

???I told myself before I graduated I wanted to write one article that might actually mean something to someone, anyone.

???Reading back over everything I have just written, for once, I think I might have succeeded.