I want to attach a footnote, a special punctuation mark, to everything I write, to let people know in advance that I need their forgiveness.

For being proud, and lazy, and entitled.

For lying without meaning to, and not being able to go back and correct every lie when I discover it, years later.

For being able, at best, only to try to get things as right as I know how–and not even trying very hard at that, much of the time.

Then it occurred to me…what if I also have to seventy-times seven forgive myself?

For being a failure.

For not reaching my potential.

For being lazy.

For not being a natural or a child prodigy or Ernest Hemingway.

For not having arrived.

For not knowing where to go.

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