Looking Forward

I'm back. Alive, well, human and whole again. And I know this for a fact not because I've been a proper adult the past few days and dropped off the dry-cleaning, dropped off my bike for repairs, made food like a boss, exercised like a boss, volunteered like a boss, but because I've been writing. And it's been grand.

How did I go so long without writing? How do I keep forgetting that writing, out of all the myriad of things that I do day to day, week to week, month to month, is the most fulfilling? It's like a switch is turned in my head once I let it go for more than a day, a switch that makes my inner monologue turn from "hey, this is fun!" to "hey, why are you doing this? You're terrible. Look at all those clunky words and sentences you keep putting down. You should go get a real job, find a real career. Cleaning the kitchen is more important than this."

But it's not - writing is more important. It's my goal, my passion, my dreams. Yet somehow that switch just keeps getting flicked to on. Why is that? Writing isn't especially difficult or hard. And every time I sit and actually get through a paragraph - every time - I remember how great it is and how easy it can be. I don't get it.

Maybe that should be my goal for March. Figuring out and banishing this self-defeating and self-sabotaging behavior. Because dammit, I'm a writer, and I'm proud of it. I'm proud of the sentences I string together, the weird and sometimes off metaphors, the characters and the plots that spring from them. I'm proud of how far I've come and I'm humbled by how much further I have to go before I can truly say I'm great. So maybe I'm not an engineer. Maybe I'm not a scientist or aspire to be the best secretary ever. That might make somebody else happy but that's not going to make me happy.

28 out of 187 pages