I just finished the first draft of my 10th book since starting this author journey in 2019. I didn’t realize I was reaching this milestone yet. And it sounds odd to say it out loud. But it’s true.
When I’ve shared the news that I finished another book, it’s a mix of reactions:
Wow! Good for you!
How did/do you do that?
Again?
People usually don’t say the ‘again’ one out loud. Probably because I say it for them.
A friend once called it false modesty, as though I were secretly and terribly proud of myself.
I am neither. I really wish I was.
Imposter / Hermit / Wannabe / Traveler
This is a vulnerable post, and maybe it’s just for me. Maybe it’s for someone sitting on their phone or at their computer, wondering if they will ever feel good about the good thing they did.
You know, the one that took sacrifices, time away from loved ones, time away from the world, time away from nature and spontaneity, and the months that used to drag on forever and now are leaned squarely against another new year, too quickly.
I write because I love to write, because I love to learn about magick and godds and myself. Last year, I wrote 50K+ words for NaNoWriMo, but no one has ever seen them.
I wrote them because I was collapsing into myself, and I needed to create enough space between the heavy and the hope so I could take the breaths I needed to think clearly. Again.
I don’t stop writing, even when I am not writing something actively or for a contract or a deadline I missed (again). I write social media posts, poetry in random TXT files, long conversations with myself in my Notes app, THIS SUBSTACK, and careful messages and texts. I write because my throat would be too sore if I said everything in my mind, because I don’t have enough air in my lungs to complete the thoughts that flow through me again and again and again. Some new. Some not. Some insistent.
I don’t write because I want someone to tell me it’s good. I write because I want to hear myself finally say, “Yes, that’s it. You said it. You said the thing. That’s right. You captured the way that really feels. You can rest now. It’s been said.”
I’ve gotten close, edged my own satisfaction until I felt my heart beat so fast I couldn’t sit down or think straight enough to type more. I’ve gotten close enough that I have cried and had to close my eyes until the room (and my heart) stopped spinning.
But I haven’t reached the place of ‘there.’ I’m not sure where that place lives, but I do know it doesn’t live in the words of others or the shares or the likes or the hearts. I know it doesn’t linger in the way I am seen by someone else; and I know this because I have dug into the pockets of others to make sure my confidence and my worth weren’t at the bottom where the lint lives, somehow.
I looked and looked outside. I looked in the pockets and the pauses and the timing and the terror that comes after I say something publicly. I searched across the vast expanses of someone else’s words to buffer my own. To finally feel like I was good enough. Talented enough. Just enough enough.
And it’s not there.
And it’s often not here.
So I keep writing because I want to find the ‘there.’ I want to find the moment or moments when I see myself clearly, for once. For good.
But how do you find a moment in the evolution of an un-still and unsteady heart?
How do you take a selfie when you keep moving out of the frame that can only hold so much and for so long?
How do you cheer when you haven’t done what you want to do?
I have moments when I dip my tow into the glass-like waters of pride, so I know it exists. I know it is pristine and problematic to know its beauty and disrupt it enough for someone else to see.
Maybe this is a soliloquy to insecurity. Or it could be another attempt to hold enough words in my hand, enough of myself to conjure the shape of evolution so I can recognize it.
So I can reorient to ‘there.’
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Thanks for reading.
Want to see more of what I do in the world? I have a website for that. HERE
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Thanks. As always, your words are moving and inspiring. Thanks for teaching me that writing is magic.
In recent weeks I've started asking myself what would change if I took myself seriously. If I let myself think that the work I'm doing matters, and is needed. What happens if I put my faith in the things I feel called upon to write? It's an interesting thought experiment. I'm going to go with it and see where it takes me, because it's possible that there's something in this. We're both standing outside of normality, outside of convention and under constant pressure to bow down to capitalism and patriarchy. Self belief is radical resistance. I think that might be an important challenge to take on.