One Step At A Time

One of the weird things about getting older is that you tend to forget who you were before. You take one step at a time as you evolve and change, and the unimportant things tend to disappear while the more dominant traits emerge. So as the year comes to an end, I’ve been reflecting on who I was ten years ago, and what happened to that college girl so excited to work at a job I was good at and write at night? I was that girl reading all the books, taking only the classes that caught my eye, drinking as much coffee as I could handle, and only worrying about one moment to the next. I don’t think I was even writing in any serious manner. It was more like whatever I wrote was connected to school. I was in no rush to leave the only system I had known since I was five years old.

Nobody Rushes Me

During that time, I had developed coping mechanisms. I don’t think I thought of them like that initially, but that’s what I believe they came to be as time went on. Nobody rushes me, keep pushing forward, and coming back stronger. That last one came from a book about Drew Brees and started a whole thing that I clung to in my final college years. For me, his story went with the message that when you come out at the other end of adversity, you will come back stronger. That was all that mattered and coupled with my other mantras (I’m going to call them mantras rather than coping mechanisms), it became what I used in order to get through anything in life.

When I finally graduated from college and was released to the world to be an adult, those mantras started to rip at the seams and were forgotten. As I got further and further away from the structure of life I had been using for years, nothing that I used to know fit into who I needed to become to survive, to live.

In this last year, I feel that I’ve had more bad times than good, and I’m not going to lie; it hit me so hard. I became so inactive with my own life that rather than fixing a health problem that has gotten worse, I just lived with it using the least amount of action possible.

As the year comes to a close, I’ve decided that it’s time to stop fooling around and take that one step at a time. The first step is readopting those mantras that helped keep me focused on my goals, and I’m starting here. It is my hope that I’ll be able to get back to the things that matter most.

Isn’t This A Website About Writing?

I know what you’re thinking. What does all of this have to do with writing? This is like a cooking blog where you get this story and all of this background information before you get to the recipe. I know. The point is that I’ve been on an extended hiatus with not just my writing but my life. I’m not even sure when it will end, only that I’m taking those steps one at a time to return to myself. I might do a soft reintroduction to all the things that I used to do, and that’s all about baby steps. It’s about taking on only as much as I can until I can take it all. It’s about not letting anyone rush me, no matter how long they think my timeline is taking. It’s about continuing to keep moving forward even if I trip along the way. It’s about how I will come back stronger at the end of all this. Some people think that as writers, we constantly have story plots running through our heads, that we can crank out things so quickly all the time. We’re ordinary regular people that struggle, stall, and fall apart. Everyone does. Not everyone repairs in the same amount of time or the same way.

Let’s be real here; I have written so many blog posts in the last year that I have never finished. If you look at my drafts section, you will see a lot of drafts that are mostly done or finished but never got posted. Some you will find that they will get released at the same time together. If they seem out of order, they probably are. What does that mean? It means that at some point, when I’m ready, you’ll have plenty to read.

What that doesn’t mean is that I can’t do it. It means that as a writer, as a human being, I fell apart, and I am currently taking one step at a time to get myself back together. For me, this all circles back around to what people like to call “writer’s block.” It’s something I don’t exactly believe in the way most people think about it. I think of it more as something that is blocking you from a different part of your life that keeps you from creating. Some people use that to help them create, others like myself get stuck because we can’t focus on anything else. I’ve had a block in my life that has kept me from being able to focus and write. I took one step at a time, and I feel like I’m ready to move forward as a creator.

Just Trying To Find Myself In The Storms I Chase

This title is a slightly modified lyric from a Kylie Minogue song called Say Something. It’s not strictly relevant here. I just like that lyric in that we really are just trying to find ourselves in the storms we chase. I believe that I am chasing a storm, and it is the perfect storm, and I believe that the real me is there. It’s a compulsion that I need to pursue to the end. 

I tend to think of myself as a creator, and that’s all I want to do. I think that’s what I am to supposed do when it comes down to it. My boyfriend constantly encourages me to find what it is that I want to do in life. He wants me to discover what would make me happy, that I could make a living of doing, and be satisfied with it. Right now, I’m not happy. I mostly love the people I work with, but I don’t really like the job. There are too many variables and often too many cooks in the kitchen if you know what I mean.

This blog is what I like, expressing my thoughts on life and writing. I love going out and taking pictures even though I’m not the greatest at it and struggle with editing. Also, believe it or not, I love streaming gameplay. I used to do it, and now I don’t because I lacked time, and honestly, I had a bad moment when someone made me feel stupid. Although, thinking back on it, it was just one time, and it shouldn’t have turned me away from it. But, again, too many cooks in the kitchen spoiled things for me in the end.

That’s going to be another small step that I will need to take one at a time. I know where I want to go in the end, so there is a long term goal, which I think is important. You have to be unafraid of making at least one long term goal to go with all of the small ones. It’s just a matter of starting somewhere.

Talk to Me!

What are your thoughts? Please comment or get in contact with me, I see all messages. In the meantime, please visit my other pages, you may find something new in The Sharing Corner. You can find past posts from that page at any of the links there for my social media pages.