When I started this blog I had a goal. 22 posts every single month. February was tough. There are only 28 days in a regular year which means I only had 6 days to pass on writing my blog.
Guess what? Life always gets in the way of writing. My writing, anyway.
There was a period of time when I put my nose to the page and wrote furiously. That’s all I did – write. And what unfurled from my wrist was banal because I was 23 and while I certainly lived through more than your average 23 year old, I also experienced less than others.
I met a woman, thirty years my senior and she said, “maybe you can’t write because you aren’t living life?”
You can agree or disagree with her, that doesn’t matter here, what matters is how it impacted me. Do I want to live my life through the page or do I want to experience all of life first hand and snatch moments to write about?
I chose the latter.
I won’t make much money writing. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother. But then I go back to, I write because I love it. I love weaving the words together and creating a picture for others and even myself to see later on. The clearer I describe the moment, the better it will sink in and remain.
Even though I am living fully and entirely the way that works best for me, it doesn’t belittle others and how they approach their own creative pursuits and careers. We just need to find where we thrive.
I thrive here, in the fleeting moments on the page. I thrive with my kids, my friends, my husband, my family, strangers in the present.
The balance works for now. Maybe someday it will be time for me to dive back into the pages with all the life that I have lived. But for now, the snatches of words on the page are enough.
And the 22 blog posts a month? Some failures weren’t meant to be successes anyway.
Embracing Next 