I Am A Writer

Yes. I am. I write the words on my mind and the feelings of my heart. It’s what I have always done.

I am a writer.

I have been hiding from my gift — for what? Fear. Judgment. Perhaps a deep knowing that it would unlock something I tell myself I am not ready for.

Joseph Campbell says “the cave which you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” He’s probably onto something. We often know deep down what we need to do, but we hold back because we’re comfortable here and now. Why mess with a good thing?

The joke is on me because I have always been a writer. Not until now do I put it on paper for the universe to recognize it in me.

For years I’ve kept journals of thoughts, ideas, feelings, and Google docs full of what some would consider an entire dissertation on current events. You see, in the year and a half of podcasting, it was always just a verbal representation of the scribbles produced from my mind.

My hand materializes the thoughts in my brain, on my heart, and I speak them into existence into a microphone.

I often wonder what my answer will be in a few months when I’m off on my own and someone says “what do you do?”. What a silly question. What does anyone do? We wake up, use the toilet, make tea, and sit at a desk that somehow equates to our value in this world.

I was always uncomfortable with any possible answer I might come up with. Shame perhaps, around the things I really enjoy, thinking that they are not considered real jobs. But writing! That is a real job. I can tell people I do that.

But what actually changes in me? Nothing. I am still the creator, dancer, podcaster, coach, friend, child, enthusiast of growth and communication — ah, but now I can give myself an acceptable job title.

That’s the whole game, isn’t it? We’re fighting to be seen as valid, to be approved, to have our existence deemed “of value”. In the midst of that battle, we lose what really calls to us. The ideas that pop into our head at night and our obsession at 6 in the morning. The 4-hour conversation with a friend that felt like 10 minutes.

What defines us?

I believe that your role as a human being is far more important than your role as an employee, a nurse, a doctor, a teacher, a barista, a mom, or a yogi. When you strip away the material, the physical objects we fill our space with, what are you then?

What is the thing that helped you find who you really are? What obsession, activity, story, experience made you think “oh this is for me! This is me. I am.”?

Writing is the foundation of my experiences in the world. The notebooks filled with rough ideas, feelings, recountings of interactions, podcast outlines that helped me make sense of the world. Many of my confusions have often been sorted out by the translation of thought to written word on white paper. Writing showed me who I am. It serves as the filter for the complex universe occurring in my own heart and mind.

To put onto paper how I feel so I may validate my own existence. The relationship created by an outside object that holds my deepest, most profound iterations of neurons firing in my brain. The paper is my friend because I am the paper. The pen is just the instrument. Just as a dancer translates the emotion from her soul into a physical movement aided by musical notes. There is a relationship we create with something perceived to be outside of ourselves — but it’s really all part of our mind/body/soul distortion.

If I am to be alone, the journal is my sidekick. My comfort in traveling to coffee shops and beach sunsets alone was because I was never really alone. The universe became my friend as she showed me there is a circle of love when I put pen to paper. We are all one. I noticed that the ocean and I are made of the same thing.

So I wrote that down.

I noticed that as I loved myself more, I could forgive others and love them by virtue of existing on the same planet as I do.

So I wrote that down.

I realized why I got mad at my boyfriend and that I had been making up all my own problems.

I wrote that down, too.

A profound realization reveals itself in my mind at 1:03am.

I write that down.

You see, I need a visual. I need to feel something in my fingertips that proves to me I am here and I am existing for a reason. Each scribble that started with uncertainty ended with a new lesson learned.

I am a writer.

I am a mass of heart and soul and mind and body.

I am.