(Clearwater Beach, birthday weekend, for when inspiration strikes — I like the ocean)
Piece of advice I should’ve taken:
Write every day.
Looking back on it, I suppose it’s all about the (wretched, stupid, careless, overly cautious, insane, half-baked, impromptu, expectant, fill-in-the-blank-with-appropriate-adjective/descriptor) choices we make. I made choices that were not entirely my own. My choices were my mother’s choices because, well, Mom. I wanted her to respect me, and the only way she’d respect me is if I did what she wanted of me. It was that way for 28 years. Even afterwards, I still followed the safe career path she’d wanted for me, not the one I’d dreamed about. Granted, it’s paid my bills, put food on my divorced-singleton’s table, allowed me to have fun sometimes, so I get it, Mom. I do. I just don’t like what it’s done for my creative sense of self. My real identity. I was meant to write. In my heart and soul and whathaveyou, I know this, and I have always, somehow, known this.
If I wasn’t halfway decent at “teaching” (such as the profession is), I would probably be working in a job that didn’t have me taking piles of paperwork home, after having spent the entire day virtually thinking of and for 50 or so students at a time. (I also wouldn’t feel as if I’d done anything worthwhile; I wouldn’t have made any sort of impact at all, I’m sure…Yes, I “get” the value of teaching.). I wouldn’t be so drained of mind and spirit by the time I got home in the afternoon or at night where all I want to do is stare emptily at the nothing there in front of me.
Writing is HARD for me now, more than it ever has been before, but I love it. It’s in me to write. I have to, and I wish I’d followed that advice from the start — to write every damned day — and keep writing, no matter how I felt at the end of the day. I try now, to take that advice, but it’s so very hard for me to think clearly anymore…That creativity, while certainly there, is much more difficult to express than it has ever been.
It shouldn’t be the case.
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Powerful Suggestion.”
This, On Purpose 
Ah…well, just write. Does it really matter if it’s difficult? Teaching is no cake walk. 😉
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Yep, same pressures to have a ‘real’ job, same result But in hindsight, the angst-ridden tripe my 18 y/o self would have produced was far better locked in the attic. Martha’s right, keep going however difficult, and even if it’s only once a week. Well, you have to, don’t you!
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