The good...that won't come out.

Do you ever feel as though greatness lies just beyond your reach?

Your arms outstretched, your fingers extended, grasping blindly in the darkness of mediocrity...

I feel that way. Perhaps it's denial, my desire to see worth in my self and in what I do.

I don't know, and I'm not un-biased enough to analyze my motivations, all I know is how I feel.

I feel as though I'm plodding along in the various areas I apply myself creatively; music, photography, writing...I know that my output is sub-par for the most part, perhaps average from time to time.

I don't fancy myself a Mozart, a Lennon, a Bresson, a Van Gogh, an Escher, a Wells. I don't even see myself as one of the millions of creatives who fly just under the radar their whole lives, doing well enough in their craft to make a living, but never quite attaining wide recognition.

I have no delusions of grandeur in that sense.

However.

I can't shake the feeling that...somewhere inside me (perhaps yet to be brought to light through the hardships of life?), somewhere there is greatness. The feeling that, if I continue to try, and practice, and study, and create, that eventually, something good will come of it, that I will, if not hit my stride and start outputting genuine art, perhaps at least I'll find my "One Hit Wonder".

Like I said, maybe it's just that I have to believe there is greatness in me to stave off despair at my current sad state. Perhaps it's that I refuse to believe that I would be created with this intense of a desire to succeed and be denied the talent. Maybe it's that I've heard from enough people who say they made it through hard work and struggle instead of naturally in-born skill.

Maybe it's not even that I lack the talent, maybe it's my complacency, my fear of change, my trepidation of baring my inner self in the way art requires to the outside world. I've never liked criticism, I've never thought enough of my own work to proudly display it.

Maybe I just lack the ambition. I feel like there are open doors, and I ignore them, or make up excuses to not take the options laid before me.

The door is unlocked, but the distance is simply to great for me to traverse, the handle simply too large for me to grasp, the door too heavy to open, and the threshold too small for me to enter.

I feel that I have greatness within me, I pray for the courage to find it, and to let it out.