Why Canāt I Just Be Good at Something?
The weight of wanting to be everything, and ending up nothing
I keep asking myself this question like itās the simplest thing in the world, though I know it isnāt. Why Canāt I Just Be Good at Something? Not extraordinary, not brilliant, not once-in-a-generation, just good. Just enough to hold it in my hands and say: this is mine.
But the truth is, every time I start to reach for something, I hear another voice in my head saying, āDonāt stop there. Try this too. And this. And that. And everything.ā
Itās exhausting to want so much, to want to be so many versions of myself all at once. I want to be the person who wakes up at 5 AM and runs until the world is still dark. I want to be the person who writes in a coffee-stained notebook for hours and somehow turns it into a book. I want to be the person who learns guitar, who paints, who cooks elaborate meals, who knows how to fix a car engine, and who speaks three languages. I want to be the person who can walk into a room and say, with certainty, Iām good at this.
And yet, when I stand in front of my life, I donāt see mastery; I see fragments. A trail of unfinished attempts. A half-read book on philosophy, a playlist of āguitar tutorialsā I never opened, a sketchpad buried under piles of clothes, a Google Doc with three paragraphs of a novel I was sure would change my life.
And the worst part? I still want to be everything. Even while drowning in the fragments, I want to add more. I want to stretch myself thinner and thinner until I disappear completely.
Sylvia Plath wrote about the fig tree. About sitting and starving because every fig represented a life, and she couldnāt choose, so they shriveled and fell. And I think she never lived in the age of Instagram reels and LinkedIn updates and endless success stories being broadcast into your pocket. She never had to see twenty-year-olds on TikTok who are already bestselling authors, millionaires, athletes, and speakers. She never had to open her phone and feel the sting of being late to her own life.
We live in a generation where wanting to be good at something is never enough. You canāt just be good, you have to be great. You have to be marketable. You have to build a āpersonal brandā around it. You have to film it, edit it, post it, and grow from it. A hobby isnāt a hobby anymore; itās either a side hustle or a dead end. And that pressure kills me before I even begin.
I canāt just write in a journal. I feel the weight of āWill this become an essay?ā I canāt just doodle; I wonder if I should scan it, make an art account, and share it. I canāt even take a walk without thinking: should I document this, should I track it, should I turn it into content? Everything that could be pure gets poisoned with the fear of being invisible.
And so I never get good at anything. Because getting good requires patience. It requires silence. It requires years of being unseen. And I am terrified of being unseen.
The contradiction sits inside me like a wound:
I want to be everything, but I donāt want to spend the time it takes to be even one thing.
I want to master a craft, but I want to taste all the others too.
I want to be special, but I donāt want to endure the ordinary years it takes to become so.
Some nights, I think maybe I donāt even want to be good at something. Maybe I just want the feeling of being good at something. The relief of knowing I belong somewhere. The validation that I am not just passing through life without leaving a trace.
Because the scariest thought isnāt that Iāll fail at trying everything. The scariest thought is that Iāll fail at everything, period, that Iāll reach the end of this one life and realize I was never good at anything at all.
I scroll, and I scroll, and I see people younger than me with skills that shine like polished glass. And I keep asking myself: what do I have? Where is my thing? Where is the thing that makes me worthy of being remembered?
And I know people, say, āYou donāt need to be good at something to have a meaningful life.ā And maybe theyāre right. Maybe joy can exist in mediocrity. Maybe trying is enough. But I donāt believe them. Not fully. Because deep inside, I want to be remembered for something. I want to be more than just the fragments.
But what if the fragments are the thing? What if my life is not meant to be one clean narrative but a messy collage of every half-attempt and restless curiosity? What if the very thing Iām good at is yearning itself, the endless hunger, the insatiable desire to touch everything at least once?
I donāt know. Maybe thatās a pretty way of disguising failure. Maybe itās just a soft excuse.
Still, late at night, when the world is quiet and Iām left alone with myself, the question returns like an echo:
Why Canāt I Just Be Good at Something?
I think about childhood a lot. How back then, being āgood at somethingā didnāt feel like this heavy, suffocating task. If you could draw a flower that resembled a flower, people clapped. If you could memorize a poem and recite it without stumbling, your teacher smiled like you were a genius. Everything felt possible then. Every skill felt within reach.
But then you grow up, and the bar keeps rising. Suddenly, āgoodā isnāt good enough. Suddenly, there are prodigies everywhere, kids your age who play violin like their hands were born for it, who solve math problems you canāt even read, who publish books before you finish your homework. Suddenly, the world is wide enough to remind you of how small you are.
And now here I am, twenty-something, and I canāt even name one thing Iām confident about. Iām decent at many things, but that word decent hurts. Decent isnāt enough to leave a mark. Decent doesnāt silence the insecurity. Decent doesnāt earn the kind of love and admiration I secretly crave.
Sometimes I envy people with āa thing.ā The painter who spends ten hours with a canvas and calls it joy. The runner who trains for marathons keeps getting faster. The baker who perfects bread recipes with infinite patience. The coder who builds apps until one of them takes off. These people have an anchor, something to tie their identity to. And me? I feel like a balloon floating, directionless, tugged by every passing wind.
And yet, I canāt let go of the desire. The desire is stubborn. It whispers to me even when Iām exhausted. It says: maybe tomorrow youāll wake up and find your thing. Maybe tomorrow youāll sit at your desk and the words will flow, or youāll pick up the guitar and suddenly it will make sense. Maybe tomorrow youāll stick to something long enough to be proud.
But tomorrow comes, and itās the same. Half an hour of trying, then distraction. Half a plan, then self-doubt. Half a dream, then collapse.
It feels like thereās a glass wall between me and the person I want to be. I can see them clearly, focused, disciplined, good. But I canāt reach them. I press my palms against the glass, watch them flourish, and all I get back is my own reflection: restless, scattered, unfinished.
And maybe thatās what kills me most, not the lack of skill, but the knowledge that the version of me who could be good at something exists somewhere inside. I just canāt access them.
I think about time a lot, too. How this is the only life we get. How every year I spend wandering and wanting is a year closer to the end. And I wonder what if I run out of time before I ever become good at something? What if my whole life is just yearning, comparing, starting over, never arriving?
Sometimes I tell myself: maybe itās okay not to be good. Maybe life isnāt about mastery, maybe itās about the trying itself. But then I look around and wonder if thatās just a lie Iām telling myself to cope.
Because the truth is, I still want it. Deeply. Desperately. I want to be good at something in this one life.
And yet, here I am, writing about wanting instead of being.
If youāve been here, reading and nodding and maybe even feeling the same ache, Iād be grateful if you supported me a little. You can buy me a coffee hereā.
Every small bit helps me keep writing, keep searching, keep trying to make sense of all this yearning.
And since I keep talking about wanting to be good at something, I should tell you I actually tried. I wrote a book. Itās called For All the Wrong Reasons.
Itās about a girl who moves to a small autumn town called Maplewoodā¦ only to find herself falling for her roommateās boyfriend. Itās messy, itās complicated, and maybe itās a reflection of what I was saying earlier, how sometimes we want things we probably shouldnāt, and how that wanting changes us anyway.
If youāre a member of Hasifās Porchlight Club ($3/month), you can read it for free.
Or, if youād rather just grab it on its own, itās $5.
Join the club here and get it for free, or
Buy the book here.
Whoa!!!! Slow down. You made me dizzy. No wonder you canāt settle on one thing. You are only in your 20ās!? And you are basically calling yourself stuck?
Try one thing at a time. Sit with it. Learn it. Try it. One thing at a time.
With love from a much older woman. š
The age of the internet has ruined genuine love and passion for things. I feel such a pressure to master my hobbies, rather than create for the sake of expression. I've been taking a LOT of time off of the internet.