David McElroy

I am terrified of not being perfect — mortally afraid of being judged as unworthy.

For many years, I’ve mostly stuck to doing things I already knew how to do. That was safer. I had been writing for the public since I was in high school. I had taken photos and done graphic design — for newspapers, magazines and advertising — since I was a teen.

My work wasn’t perfect, but I was competent enough to feel like an expert. I could put my work in front of the public — expose myself in a very real way — without fear of looking too foolish.

Lately, I’ve been trying something at which I’m a beginner. I’m a rank amateur. And I am terrified.

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The sheets of rain lash down, almost maniacal in their resolve to pound everything in the way.

The lightning flashes blindingly. For a split second, there is silence, followed by the booming thunder nearby.

The water pounds and pounds. The thunder rumbles. The lightning comes again.

The storm is hitting my windshield and the wipers struggle to move the water. Their back and forth motion is hypnotic — and I wonder whether the storm I feel and hear and fear is really outside — or if it’s inside my heart.

It’s dark and it’s loud and it’s gloomy. The storm outside the car threatens me physically, but the storm inside threatens something far deeper. Far more existential. It’s pounding on my very core again.

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Although I haven’t been publishing much recently, I haven’t shut the site down. After this website became unreachable early Wednesday morning, I started getting emails from readers asking whether I had deleted the site.

The short answer is that nothing has changed.

The longer answer is that a buggy update to a WordPress plugin took me offline after a routine update around midnight Tuesday night. I wasn’t aware that the update caused the problem until I got emails from readers asking what happened, so thank you to the dozen or so who were concerned enough to ask.

I haven’t felt much like writing lately — for various reasons — but I’m still here. I hope to eventually be back on a slightly more consistent basic. Thanks for the concerned inquiries.