Crisis.

I’m so close to giving up. Because I’m not good enough, because I’m not the best, because I can’t capture a reader (even myself), because it’s not my native language, because I’ll never play with English as I can play with Russian, because nobody would be interested in publishing my texts, because…. Ok, the only good thing about it is that I am perfectly aware of what is going on in my mind and why I feel so depressed and scared. It’s called a crucial moment. It happens in every work you get, in every process you start. There are certain stages in this process. The first one is about admiration and passion – you’ve got a new job, everything seems to be so bright and interesting, so fresh and fascinating. You are truly enjoying your work and make up grandiose plans for a future that plays in beams of success and fame. But the following comes the second stage – time of doubts, throes of creation, dissatisfaction, and an ardent desire to give up. You suddenly find out that your results are not that brilliant all the time, that there are ups and downs, that great successes require a lot of hard work, that sometimes despite of impressive efforts you put into your work it doesn’t satisfy you.

I was so excited about my writing class, so seized with a desire to create, to write, to work. My adolescent cherished dream to write books that will make people happier, to be a great famous writer, to change the world just with kind words seemed to be reincarnated. And here this day broke out. Professor in a class discussed our essays and ask one of the students to read any person’s appearance description from her essay. She read only couple of sentences. But it was a severe blow for me – I would never write like her in English, because it’s not my native language. She sounded exactly how I wished to sound in my texts, how I wished to be able to play with language. And here was when it started. Doubts (“do all these efforts worth it?”, “maybe it’s all pointless and I shouldn’t find comfort in the vain hope for being a great writer or journalist in English?”), self-humiliation (“nobody is going to read my articles or books”, “I write with tons of grammar and syntax mistakes”, “my professor is just a very nice person and doesn’t tell me the truth”) and the worst thought in the world “I failed”. That is exactly the moment when you either shrink in the face of hardships and give up or you don’t succumb to a fleeting weakness, keep struggling, and then achieve a truly success. Because if the hill will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed will go to the hill. It’s easier to say that you just aren’t able to carry out your dream than actually try to move toward it step by step. If you are certain that it’s what you want.