It’s officially SPRING! No, don’t look at the snow outside. Or the thermometer. Or the clouds obscuring the precious, golden, lemony sunlight… it is officially spring!
JUST GO WITH IT.
Spring, like many things in our calendar and in our world, is rife with symbolism and meanings that have been liberally applied by human beings since the dawn of time (or at least our cognition of time). Spring is a time of rebirth, regeneration, healing, cleaning, growing. It’s a time of fertility and creativity. It’s a time of resurrection. So it’s the perfect time for me to begin my new life focused on my writing career, instead of merely focusing on survival (this is my last day working full time at my soul/time-sucking day job).
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve had some major setbacks in the past year, and I’ll be the first to take responsibility for those setbacks, too. But I’m here, now. In this new place in time, I’ve made choices, taken chances, and given myself permission to move forward on a basis of courage, hope, and dreams alone. And I couldn’t be more excited, more proud, or more terrified.
Yes, there is a lot of fear surrounding this. Will I get writer’s block? Will I run out of ideas? Will I accidentally fall under an ancient Egyptian curse that makes my fingers disintegrate every time they touch a keyboard? Maybe. Maybe I’m not good enough, and not brave enough, and not really “meant to be” a writer.
But my fears change nothing. Maybe I will have another existential crisis. Maybe I will fail, and fail, and fail. Maybe I will even give up. But I already know, no matter what, that I will keep crawling back, bloody and bruised and broken, because my dreams refuse to die–no matter how much I smother, bludgeon, and burn them.
And so, maybe, just maybe, I will succeed.
But it’s really hard to publicly admit that I believe I will succeed. Isn’t that messed up? And yet, I wonder if that’s the real magic, and real courage: daring to believe that you might just be as great as you can imagine yourself to be; refusing to believe in the lie of perfectionism; refusing to buy into a world that doesn’t want you to celebrate the fact that you are fucking awesome, and you have got so much to give.
So I’m gonna own that. I’m doing this crazy, risky, wild thing by making less money and spending my life savings to allow me to stay home and write–but I’m doing it because I believe in myself. I believe in my ability to write, and my ability to break hearts, and my ability to make people cry, and my ability to tell a damn good story.
I believe I will succeed.
Call me crazy, but it’s true.
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