Years later, I see that I was an outsider who could never fit in

Have you ever wanted something so badly that you’d do almost anything to achieve it? Have you ever been so close to such a thing that you could taste it?

When I was about 30 years old, I wanted to be a successful newspaper publisher for a large company. I wanted to be the “wunderkind” who people in the company whispered about — the one who everybody expects to be running the company soon.

A big newspaper chain hired me. I entered the company’s three-year publisher training program, but I was deemed ready to run a newspaper after just 10 months. I was promoted to be the editor and publisher of a small newspaper that published three times a week.

I was on top of the world. I was going to amaze everybody with what I could do. I was going to publish a high-quality newspaper for the people of the town and make money for the owners of my company. My employees were going to love me. We were going to do great things together. I was going to be on the fast track to running the company one day.

Just a year later, I quietly resigned and left town. I felt like a failure. Very little went right for me. I didn’t get along with the regional vice president who supervised my area. We fought over everything. My staff didn’t especially like me. I had to fire several people.

Mostly, though, I simply didn’t fit. I was an outsider who didn’t belong in this place. The people of the town didn’t like me — and I didn’t like them.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night with this failure on my mind — and I suddenly realized that I never had a chance.

When I woke up with this long-dead situation on my mind last night, it was with a sense of panic or even dread. Even though it’s been decades, I felt shame. I felt the weight of feeling like a failure once again. I’m not sure whether I had been dreaming about it or if something else triggered the feelings. But for some reason, I suddenly saw things in a way that I never had before.

There are times in life when talent and hard work can help you achieve great things. There are other times when being likable and fitting in can take you much further. When I was growing up, I assumed that talent and work would always win for me. I understand now that my talent and drive could never have been enough in that situation.

I was an outsider. I wasn’t the social guy who everybody liked. And I didn’t really understand that I was trying to do a job that called for fitting in and being liked — not for being the smartest and most talented guy in every room.

I’ve been thinking about this all day. I think I can finally find closure about something that I thought was settled long ago. I don’t have to feel shame. I don’t have to feel like a failure. I just have to accept who and what I am — what I’ve always been — and finally accept that I could never be anything but an iconoclastic outsider.

No matter where I’ve gone in life, I’ve always been an outsider. No matter how carefully I faked my social role and no matter how good or smart I was, I was faking something fundamental. I knew that. Everybody else knew that, too. I didn’t belong among them. I simply didn’t fit.

At every place I’ve stopped in life — socially and professionally — the story has been the same. I’ve been good at every job I’ve done. I’ve had a a lot of success.

But I don’t fit. Anywhere. I am always the outsider who looks at the world differently than others do.

For all these years, I’ve been tortured by what went wrong at that final newspaper. I’ve felt shame at not achieving what I wanted to achieve. I’d felt humiliated by feeling like a failure.

But something about what I’ve been thinking about today shows me that I have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not that I failed. I simply misunderstood what the job called for. And I was wrong for that job.

A newspaper publisher has to be able to be sociable and likable for the advertisers and the community leaders of his area. He has to be willing and able to be “one of the boys” among the movers and shakers of his town.

That wasn’t me. That never could have been me. And it still can’t be me.

I’m an outsider. I’m an alien. I look at every place I am from a detached point of view. I see things differently than the people who are comfortably part of the social ecosystem.

Those people who are part of that crowd are probably happier. They have more friends and fewer frustrations. But this is who I am. Someone who sees things differently. Someone who provides a very different point of view.

It’s time for me to fully accept that I’ll always be an outsider, no matter where I go. It’s just who I am.