If I had to choose one activity to spend all day, every day pursuing, it would be this. Writing. Taking words and phrases and bending and shaping them into narratives that describe the never-ending variety posed by the human experience. It's fascinating and hard and mentally sweaty and cathartic and grand, all at the same time. If I had to choose one activity never to do again, it would be writing. Yes, you read that right. It is difficult, mind-bending, soul-wrenching and utterly exhausting. Why is it that whatever it is that you have been placed on earth to do is, while your grand passion, also your nemesis.
If a writer has social tendencies...said writer never writes. He or she has fragments floating in his or her head, sees potential characters in strong personalities all around him or her, and yet, the page is blank. The page. Is. Blank. Two years ago I started a novel. I wrote 100 pages and landed on stop. Oh, I've done some things since. A few things. But my grand work of creative fiction is moldering in a shared desktop.
Guess what? All of those intense characters will live again. They shall! I shall begin again. Just like that. As if I have opened a children's pop-up book and, instead of a mass of heavy paper in an assortment of contortions popping up to be understood, a party of people will emerge. I'm getting excited just thinking about it.
I am so thankful there is something that I love to do. Even if I hate to do it. Even if I have to lock myself away from human society in utter silence for hours to do it (my attention span is as fragile as a robin's eggshell after the baby has kicked it two floors to the forest floor).
Thank you, Lord, for the gift of a gift. For the gift of work that I love to do. For people who believe in me as I do it. Help me never, ever, ever again take them for granted.
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