illegitimi non carborundum

I feel like a failure. I'm not fishing for compliments, I swear. I know I'm a good person, and I know I'm smart. But I still feel like a failure.

My professional and social circles consist of some really smart, successful people. At work today there was a party for one of the academics in our department who is off to Washington to become part of Obama's team. Plus, I happened to chat briefly with someone who works in his department, a woman who went to the same college as me, and we know each other only vaguely. She graduated three years after me, and when I asked her what she was doing these days she informed me that she was off to pursue a PhD in the midwest, and that she was back at our alma mater last weekend to participate in a panel discussion about her field.

Of course. That makes only the latest in a slew of fellow graduates to forge ahead in the academic world. I feel left in the dust.

It's not that I'm not smart enough. I'm certainly no genius, but I'm smart enough (Malcolm Gladwell makes some terrific points about this in Outliers). I'm smart enough to pursue an advanced degree or make more money or find intellectual challenges more readily. But here's the catch: I don't have the right temperament to do those things. I've thought about this long and hard over the years, and I don't think this is a cop-out. I think it's pretty accurate to say that it's my emotional self that can't hack it, not my intellectual self. I struggle with some pretty deep-rooted issues (ones that I don't really want to get into on the web) that impede any potential progress I might make. Sometimes even the day-to-day tribulations are too intense.

And the real kicker is that every single thing I feel manifests itself somehow in my physical body. Who knows which comes first, the emotion or the physical symptom... regardless, the ebb/flow miasma of physical sensitivities sucks. So I've worked hard to alleviate all kinds of pains over the years. The good side is that I've reached a pretty solid plateau where I have a few engaging activities at work (without extreme stress), am taking classes to keep myself from utter boredom (without spending much money or having to choose a definite path), have a great husband, and am generally happier than I have been in a long time. I've managed to find a sweet spot of maximum payoff for the minimal effort I put in.

But I'm restless. I get bored too easily but when I shake things up the stress takes its toll on my body and mind. Goddamn, why do I have to be so sensitive--and in multiple areas! I don't know how to change that about myself, or if I even have the power to do so. Is it worth the effort to change my nature or will I be fighting the losing battle against genetics?