A Discussion On Deadlines

In which we cover coming dead-last in a race that doesn't really exist, and one of the most difficult lessons I've had to learn in my twenties: comparison truly is the thief of joy.

As a journalist, I am intimately familiar with deadlines. Every piece of work that lands on my desk arrives with one: a date looming neatly above the assignment. Some of my favorite assignments have deadlines that exist far into the future, giving me months to immerse myself in reporting — to conduct interviews, to transcribe until my fingers ache, to sculpt my words into something I’m proud to hand over to scrutinizing eyes.

Some of my least favorite assignments leave only a few days to complete every step of the process; interviewing, fact-checking, writing, revising, perfecting, and perfecting… and perfecting…

I’ll admit that despite all my years of reporting, deadlines are not my strong suit. They fill me with a jittery kind of pressure, they send a shiver up my spine, a nervous hum under my skin. Though, I suppose I can acknowledge that they are not the enemy.

But deadlines begin to feel like the enemy when they creep into my everyday life, worming their way into the cracks in my confidence and insisting that I am tardy. Suddenly, the neat type above the assignment of my life is glaring red — “OVERDUE,” it is screaming at me. I am so far behind.

Behind who? Behind what? I honestly don’t think I could tell you. But I feel it anyway — the weight of invisible milestones that everyone my age seems to be chasing with perfect form. Friends winning awards, landing bylines, joining mastheads. Building careers I once believed I’d grow into naturally, and publishing the stories I can only dream of writing. And while I am cheering wildly from the sidelines, basking in the success of people I love — I certainly wish I was charging down the field with them, assignment on my desk and pen in my hand.

Strangers on LinkedIn announce another achievement, another promotion, while I sit with applications and rejection letters open on my laptop, feeling like I should be doing more.

There is a confounding sense of juxtaposition in watching others do the work that I love so deeply. To want it so badly, while fearing I just might not be good enough to do it. I want to be proud of what I have achieved up to this point (HELLO, an internship at The Boston Globe!), but right now, my career is on pause. And as I watch others make bold, life-changing moves, there’s a buzzing internal whine asking, “Why not me?”

I tell myself that I’m just taking a different route, but some days that reassurance just doesn’t hold.

Lately, though, I’ve been wondering why I can’t loosen my grip on the metaphorical calendar squeezing in my chest. I’ve been asking myself who assigned these deadlines I’m supposedly missing. Who decided that I should have accomplished anything by a specific age? Why do I act as though an editor is hovering over me, ready to reject me if I don’t hit the milestones on time?

The truth is simple: the editor is me.

I am the one stamping “OVERDUE” across stories that haven’t been finished yet. I am the one insisting that my twenties should follow a structure, an arc, a logic. I am the one trying to rush through the human parts of my life as though they’re just tasks on a checklist.

But life doesn’t operate on a newsroom schedule. Some stories take months; some take years. Some don’t resolve until you’ve rewritten them a dozen times. And some aren’t meant to be written until you’ve actually lived them.

So I’m practicing something I’ve never been good at: letting my deadlines soften. Allowing them to blur at the edges. Trusting that what is meant for me will still arrive even if I don’t submit by the deadline I’ve imposed on myself.

I’m learning to believe (albeit slowly and imperfectly) that being behind doesn’t define me. It doesn’t define my career, and it doesn’t define my twenties.

All it means is that this story — my story — isn’t finished yet. But I am proud of what I’ve accomplished thus far. And I’m here, pen in hand, still writing it.

A film photo of me on my first day with The Boston Globe as an Editorial Intern, taken with my camera by my fellow intern, Harriet.