Friday, April 26, 2013

Writing it Out

I started this blog back in 2005 as a way to connect with people. I'd moved to New York from the west coast and wanted to have some way for my family and friends to feel closer. Somehow words seemed to be the secret link among all the people I loved.
Friends had their own blogs. They would share ideas. We would debate them. I would feel fulfilled and not so lonely in a new place surrounded by millions of people who I didn't know.

And then something happened.
Slowly I started feeling more comfortable in my environment. My online forums with friends seemed to become a little more divisive. I probably became a little too pleased with my own writing in some ways - and in others completely ashamed of the way I'd formerly thought.
Eventually I started writing somewhere else.
And now I wonder whether to write at all.

People ask what I do for a living and I cringe when I tell them that I'm "also a writer." Because technically, a writer is someone who writes. And I haven't been writing so much. Not even in my diary. The closest I get to exposing my inner musings has somehow become limited to email replies and Facebook comments.
Every day I struggle to get pen to paper or words on my blank screen. And I can't help but feel like a failure. Like somehow I'm hiding from who I really am. As if I were to somehow start typing and some unlikely and unliked truth will make its dreaded appearance.

So how do I deal?

There are days I try to be brave and just start writing again. I remember that it's often the case that true bravery is rising up to who you really are. And I recall myself as someone who shares. Who opens up. Who strives to make the world a more loving, likeable place through the mere presence of connection and gratitude.
And then I sit.
I debate whether I should actually publish posts, submit queries to editors, and sometimes I even wonder whether it's worth responding to emails.
What good does this do anyone? Especially myself?

In these few moments, I'm trying to resurrect that feeling of connection and allowing myself, once again, to feel that surge of simple joy and fear - and I will allow myself to write again. Just for today.