If you want to be a writer, write

Some many years ago, I bought a book called On Writing Well. I had never really written anything but always felt like I needed to write a book someday. I actually did read the book but never took to writing! Then, I wanted to start a ‘blog’, like everyone else. Not sure what my intention was at the time but it didn’t go very far. A few years later I gave it another try with WordPress. I really enjoyed writing some things here and there but again, the posts were few and far between. There are always excuses. No time. Nothing to write about. Etc. But still in the back of my mind I want to write. More. So what’s keeping me from doing it?

Depression. Is that an excuse or a reason? Perhaps a bit of both. The funny thing is that writing is such good therapy so I should really be writing more when I’m depressed. But I’m not. Depression is making me hide under a rock, paralysed. It’s ripping me from all will to do anything. I can go on to explain how it goes but unless you suffer from depression, you probably won’t understand. The last bout I just went through was another postpartum depression. Lovely.

So after coming out of the black cloud, I found myself getting motivated to work on finding what it is I want to do. I know I want a career change but I don’t know what. I don’t even know what my dreams are! One thing I recalled was reading that you need to try things out to see if you like them. This means less wondering and more doing. So I signed up for a computer science online course (as I’ve been ‘wondering’ if I would like to be a programer). Then I watched again a video I had seen six months ago which was basically saying if you want to be a writer, write. Not tomorrow, today! And that if you’re not writing right now ask yourself why you want to be. This had a profound effect on me. Not about writing of course, but about many things. There’s many habits I wish of taking on, that I’ve been wishing to take on for many years in fact, and that still haven’t materialised. There’s never a better time to start than now.

(~Nov 2014)