Rediscovering Myself as a Writer...Hopefully

Writing has always been a passion of mine. From the time I could pick up a pencil and find a piece of paper, I was writing. Before we had a computer in our house, I used to go over to grandma's house and spend hours typing my stories into Microsoft Works. I still have those stories somewhere in the basement at home. I'll have to dig them out sometime and read them. I suppose they're awful, but that's not the point. Even at such a young age, I had a desire to write and become an author.

It's a passion that carried through to high school, and English quickly became my favorite subject. Reading and writing both seemed to come naturally to me, and I never received anything less than a B in any of my English classes (Academic writing in college was a bit challenging at first, because my brain tends to linger more on the creative side of writing). What's the point? The point is that somewhere along the way, I lost it. My muse took flight, leaving my mind filled with all of these ideas for stories, and when I try to get them on digital paper, all I see is a brick wall (aka, writer's block).

I think I know what happened. Somewhere during the college years as I was writing all of those academic papers, I found it harder and harder to find time to let my muse out to play. The more I kept him bottled up, the less he made his presence known to me. My writing shifted from creative to academic to keep up with all of the required papers that come along with being an English teacher and a grad school student after that.

I need and want to recapture the attention of my creative muse. The best way to do that is to begin exercising him once again. Reestablish the relationship that I used to have with him, so that I can get those ideas out there again. My dream job is to be a published author, and that's never going to happen if I'm not writing....constantly!

My goal is to write something creative everyday. It doesn't have to be extensive. Tonight it was a character development profile for a new story idea. It just needs to be something creatively productive in some way, shape, or form. I know I made my muse sound real, which kind of makes me sound crazy, but it all works out in my head.

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will." -George Bernard Shaw

~Joshua

Reflections from the Past and Dreams for the Future

Reflections from the Past and Dreams for the Future

Tonight I was rummaging through some of my past writings, both way back when and in the more recent past, when I came across a writing from when I first began the coming out process to my friends and co-workers. Mostly, it was about Nick and how he helped me come out to them, where it led from there, and it also talked about where I thought my life would never go from there. Most of the narrative is uncomfortable for me to read now, despite the fact that I wrote it. Take this passage for instance:

"I didn’t choose to be who I am. One doesn’t wake up one morning and say, “Hey, today’s
a good day to become gay and hated!” I do choose to continue living a double life.
Although, now the cards have turned a little in my favor. One life is one in which I’m
happy and accepted among those I care about. The other life is one in which I hide from
my family in fear of what they’d think if they knew the real me. Maybe one day I’ll be
able to open up to them and everything will be all right and completely different from
how I’ve always imagined it would be. One thing is certain, though. When I find the one
that I feel like I can be in a relationship with (I’m still hoping it will be him, but we’ll see
where that goes. It’s a work in progress), I’ll want them to know regardless of how they
feel about it. For now, it’s a sacrifice I choose to make, because I’m not at the point
where I feel like I can live without them or feel like I’ve disappointed them.
For now, I have a circle of friends and an amazing non-boyfriend, as some of those
friends like to refer to him, for love and support. Since I started this journey, I’ve been a
much happier person. There have been good days and bad days, of course, but most days
are better than the day before with little trials and obstacles along the way. I’m finding
out that it’s not wrong to be who I am, and the lies that I’ve grown up around no longer
imprison me. To set the record straight about how I met him, I’ve quit looking for
random hook-ups online since then, because I’ve found that I don’t need those
momentary feelings of acceptance to feel like a real person anymore. I don’t need them,
because I’ve found acceptance all around me."

Remembering how I met Nick always kind of makes me feel sick inside, and only a few very close friends know the way we met. It's not something I'm proud of, but I feel like it was meant to happen anyway. Like I said in the passage, I've stopped looking for momentary acceptance and have begun the search for something real. Unfortunately, that something real isn't with Nick, but there were just some things that neither of us could look past in the other's lifestyle; we made the wise decision to move on and just remain friends. 

Thank goodness I was wrong about my family! Since telling them, they have been so accepting. They do not, however, know how I met Nick. Like I said, I'm not proud of it, and I'm definitely not that person anymore. Luckily, that was a very brief experimental time in my life that began and ended with Nick.

That about sums up my reflections from the past. I found that tonight and made myself open it up and read it again, knowing the shock it would put to my mind-frame. Sometimes it takes those jolts from the past to make you focus on the future again, and I know I've been in a "doom and gloom" funk here lately that I haven't been able to shake myself from. I feel like when I complain about my life and my bills and my feelings of loneliness that I'm sapping all of the positive energy from everyone else as well, and I don't want to be that person.

I chose the picture of the beach at the top of this post, because that's what I'm looking forward to. It's the picture I've painted in my mind of somewhere I see myself retreating to, hopefully within the near distant future, to escape from everyday life for a while and just take some time to build me again. That, of course, includes one of my best friends, Heather, plenty of books to read for the duration of the trip, and lots of coffee (probably iced for fraps, because it will be warm as beaches should be). If we're on a real beach, there will of course be guy watching (because bird watching is overrated) and natural tanning (winter has not been nice to my skin...lol. Just kidding; had to throw that in there.)

I'm trying to get myself back to a place where I'm happy all the time (or most of it, at least). Life is too short to be stuck in the "doom and gloom." People, myself especially, tend to focus on the negative. I'm not sure why it's so human-nature to do so, but sadly negativity is more evident in a person's life than positivity and happiness. We discussed this in training class today: When a customer has a negative experience, they will rant about it to at least 8 of their friends; however, they may only tell 1 or 2 people about the great experience they had. 

Consider this my attempt at a happier me: There are great things in my future, despite the current struggles of my past and present, and there's so much to live for. There's really no reason to be "doom and gloom."

"There is only one cause of unhappiness; the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them." -Anthony de Mello

~Joshua