Confession: I wish I could say, unblushing, shoulders back in confidence, straight-faced and clear-eyed, that I would choose to feel brilliantly successful even if I spent the day clipping my toenails, watching “Celebrity Rehab,” and wondering whether it was worth the trouble to finish that book (the one I was reading, not the one I was writing) rather than feel unsuccessful even if fate found me wearing a crown, sapphire slippers, a ballerina outfit (and looking fabulous in it), deciding whether to accept the Nobel or Pulitzer, with George Clooney and Gabriel Bryne as my dates (why decide on only one? Bad enough my fantasy has me choosing between awards).

I’d rather be successful and not know it.

I really wish it were not the case.

Trust me: I know better than to want this; I wish I could, like Emile, choose It’s a Wonderful Life as my model text; I wish I could, in a clear voice, echo Ines’s hard-won wisdom and persuasive self-confidence.

Instead I fear being Malvolio; I fear being Gus Trenor; I fear being a combination of Blanche DuBois, Roberta Alden, and Jean Brodie (prime time or not). I fear being the kid I was in second grade who wore a hugely puffy dress for the class picture and looked like a pink marshmallow when everybody else wore cool matching stretch striped clothes (What were those outfits called? Anybody remember? It was a brand-name — not Danskin, that was high school — and I can’t remember enough of the details to find it on the Web, which is another thing I fear: not remembering sufficient detail to find more detail, but that’s for another post…).

I fear being what those whom I’ve hurt or enraged or frustrated or simply annoyed, in their worst hearts, say I am: an imposter.

So while I hate to admit it, and while my shrink will hate to hear it, my friend PK will be entirely unsurprised to know I would choose to remain in unhappy unawareness rather than blissful ignorance. You remember that PK was the one who posed the success vs. satisfaction conundrum, presented me (and us, dear readers, us — thank you for that) what turns out to be a sort of emotional and intellectual Möbius strip. PK, too, suffers from all the bizarrely (and ironically creative) forms of self-destructive and occasionally self-motivating internal judgments we saw played out in the responses to this previous post.

She and I, good friends that we are, spend a lot of time on the phone, over e-mail, and in one another’s company, saying “You’re smart, you’re great, if they don’t accept you/hire you/publish you/choose you/want you/love you, it’s their loss.” We believe it about one another; sometimes we can help the other believe it about herself.

I congratulate those of you who can navigate the world without the compass of outside validation. I also envy you. My deepest wish is that you will help others guide themselves to your centered position.

As for the rest of us, let’s not abandon hope, ambition, humor, or try to slake our genuine thirst on the waters of a mirage. Maybe someday the Möbius strip, like the worm, will turn and we’ll be able to pat ourselves on the back.

Maybe.