Accomplished?

There are times when I’ve asked myself: “What have I accomplished?”

It’s a question whose meaning and answer depends on what a person defines as an accomplishment, because for one person, writing a book is an accomplishment, but to another, it’s not enough (meaning, they should’ve written two).

But two isn’t for everyone. It could take a writer years to write a novel, or even a decade. Who knows how much work and time they’ve put into it, how many drafts they’ve written, how many roadblocks they’ve stumbled upon in the writing process. They don’t want to rush publishing a story that they’re not happy with, a story that still needs work. To them, finishing that first draft is an accomplishment in and of itself.

In a way, our answer to that question is more telling about ourselves than what we’ve actually accomplished. If we’re extremely hard on ourselves, or hold exceedingly high expectations, then whatever we’ve accomplished might never be enough. But if we know how hard something was to achieve, not to mention the successes we made along the way, then at least one thing we’ve completed from start to finish is surely enough, surely worthy of an accomplishment.