It’s taken a few months for me to learn that I should write whether I feel like it or not. Just like I should go grocery shopping before I go hungry and do laundry before I run out of underwear. Hey, everyone’s gotta grow up sometime right?
It seemed that there was no solution when the cool, crystal pool of inspiration that I’d thought was bottomless dried up and left me tapping my fingers on the desk instead of the keyboard. No more late nights in a cluttered corner of the living room with my squinty, red rimmed eyes awash in the blue-white light of my computer screen. No more early mornings with my caffeine addled fingers twitching across the keyboard to the sound of weather and traffic reports. I got all blah. Like the milk carton that someone shouldn’t have left in the fridge, I was suddenly empty.
Cue the epiphany. Two weeks ago I was walking to my car after work, thinking about how I wished I felt like writing because I miss it, and it hit me: write anyway. Don’t wait for the adrenaline rush of an amazing idea. Take a leap of faith and write one word on the screen. Just one. And trust that the next word will reveal itself, followed by the next and the next. So I did. I’m still not oozing ideas and getting so excited that I stay up all night weaving plot, but at least I feel like I’m back in my own skin.
I’ll refrain from saying something super cliché and dramatic such as “writing is like breathing to me”. But it’s pretty darn important. Even more important than clean underwear…which reminds me...I have some laundry to do.
What about you? What holds you back from doing what you truly love?
In spite of my endeavor to cook creatively and write about it, I continually resist true culinary innovation --whether out of simple laziness or a more complex set of fears, I'm not sure. As an unfortunate side effect, I feel less confident in my ability to share my experiences. It takes a combination of iron will ("I WILL make this recipe!") and refusal to quit a project once begun... oh, and a husband who occasionally wants to eat!
ReplyDeleteI can be hesitant to branch out in my cooking as well. Recently I discovered quinoa and although there are 47,000 ways to prepare it I keep making the same thing over and over. Oh well :) I hope you keep at it. Looking forward to reading about your experiences!
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