Thursday, January 24, 2013

navigating waters like these


faith is such a tricky thing.

when you want me to put forth all of my effort into something i can see. a goal i know will be waiting for me with a big, fat achievement of some sort. not necessarily a pat on the back, but a visible, authentic end in sight for all the work i'm putting in.

but to put faith into a vocation like this, well, it borders on the miraculous. the divine. the something-i-obviously-don't really possess yet.

swimming in a sea of blogs and twitterverse and agent contests and pitch slams, looking for peers to connect with, mentors to learn from, and dream makers to sign your contract...life can get exhausting.

i pretty much have spent the entirety of this past month spinning wheels, half-heartedly trying to make magic happen in my own career and it seems i'm just burned out. i'm out of energy and after spending the whole night pouting and feeling sorry for my direction-less self. does that ever happen to you?

when you try to comprehend the sheer number of people just like you...with dreams as big as rainstorms...trying to make the connections you need...looking for the feedback you seek, it can be horrifying. sad, really. it makes me sad to think about it.

but i teach creative writing to fourth graders every friday. and despite what these kids have going on at home, no matter how bad of a day they've had with the teachers and school staff prior to me arriving, i don't let them give up on their words. they can be in pain. that's ok. just write. they can be frustrated about rules and homework. that's ok. just write.

i tell them that life will ebb and life will flow. we can't really change that or insist it always go our way. all we have control over is our pencil and our paper. or, i guess, in this case, our keyboards.

and those ten year olds never fail me. no matter how much they want to resist, they keep writing and they let their story take over where their brain might want to quit.

good advice, right?

so here's to keeping the computer screen alight for a few sentences more. here's to turning off the twitter, the facebook, and ignoring the blogs for an extended vacation.

write. just write. the rest will work itself out.
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