Lowered expectations

Early on in my time here, in the midst of a massive panic attack about how many stories I wanted to do and how little time there is to do them, a phrase popped fully-formed and Athena-like out of my head:

“You are going to fail.”

That sounds terrible, but in the wake of that thought came a wave of relief.  That’s right, I’m going to fail at this fellowship.  It’s inevitable.   No matter what I do, I’m going to feel like a failure.  Okay then.  There’s one thing I don’t have to worry about.

I am going to fail because, quite frankly, I suck at reasonable expectations.  I tried to ask myself how many stories on air would equal a successful trip in my mind and … yeah, nope … my mind refused to play ball.  All of them! it hollered Every single one you’ve given even the least passing thought to plus any ones any other journalist writes while you’re here and oh yeah, probably any other ideas that crop up for the next five years or so.

(I should mention that in my daily life I feel like a failure for not writing every single article in every issue of the Denver Post so this isn’t exactly a new experience for me.)

I am going to fail because if I did a lot of easy-to-get stories I’d feel like I should have devoted my time to one single deep and meaningful topic … and if I buckled down on one tricky subject I’d envy every other fellow who papered the world with work.

I’m going to fail because the stories I’m doing are definitely not the most important ones in Ethiopia, even though the point of the fellowship isn’t just to rehash headline news.

I’m going to fail because I won’t get a half-hour radio documentary, a magazine cover story, or a book out of my time here.

I’m going to fail because I’m not going to get thrown in jail or thrown out of the country which is, I’m beginning to suspect, what most editors and many of my friends here would like to see happen (or else why would they keep bringing up exactly the kinds of stories that yield those results?)

But knowing that there’s no way what I do with this experience can live up to what I expect of it, is really freeing.  It’s become my mantra.  When I run into brick walls of bureaucracy, when I haven’t wanted to leave the house for homesickness, when I’ve felt less than intrepid and awesome, I’ve repeated to myself, “you’re going to fail.  You know you’re going to fail.  So it’s okay.  Do what you need to do, or don’t do what you can’t, it doesn’t matter, you’ll feel the same in any case.”

Now, if I can just manage a version of fellowship failure that includes five network stories and three local ones (and have at least one of them feel like a work of significance…)

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