Let Me Introduce Myself

I am thankful of where I am in my heart.

I have spent the last few years of my life searching for purpose and meaning. I have done it be engulfing myself in hobbies, leaping blind into relationships and trying to look inside to find the answers.

I have written before, dabbling in short stories, poems and even giving a hand at writing novels but those fell to the way side. I found myself distracted and unwilling to overcome those distractions to take part in a craft I have loved and admired all of my life.

Spending so much time and energy in this quest for purpose I could never have guessed that I would turn a corner and there it would be. I was talking to some of my friends and we were discussing what our dream careers would look like. I listened to the answers and found great energy in their passion. A golfer, pilot, business owner, motorcyclist were some of the ideas shared by my companions. When they turned to me for my answer for the first time in my life an answer came to mind without thought or mediation....a writer.

While the discussion turned to money and notoriety and how their career paths would measure up to one and other. I found myself satisfied with the very act of writing, be it short stories, novels, poems or even blogging, I just wanted to write.

Why haven't I chosen to write before, this idea couldn't simply be from thin air? The answer is, I have been scared. To me it is easy to succeed and fail at trivial activities such as working a retail job. I knew that my hobbies and my job did not define me as a person, I took solace in the fact that I was more and even though it was never shared to the world, that I was more and that could never be taken away from me.

I have a gift or perhaps its simply something everyone in the world possesses and I have been naive to it. I found ever since I was young maybe 9 or 10 years old, I would have these stories, characters, events and conflicts in my head. I would lay in bed in the mornings or before I lay down to sleep in the mornings and I could literally spend hours day dreaming these scenarios.

At first I loved it and then it began to creep deeper and deeper into my everyday thought. I would be at school and something would trigger a new idea or perhaps a wrinkle on a story from the past and I would find myself completely absorbed into this world inside my head. It was distracting at first and then it became overwhelming to my Psyche. I was unable to focus on anything for more than a few minutes before my mind would wander back to my stories.

I got to the point where I fully believed something was wrong with me. I couldn't imagine anyone else being caught up in such thoughts and emotions. I struggled to find peace or at least a way to cope with these mental lapses into fiction.

I thought that perhaps writing them would give me peace but I instead found myself crippled with a fear. A fear that if I shared my deepest most private thoughts that I would be ostracized from my scarce circle of friends. Instead I continued to lock them deep inside my heart and it manifested its self in stronger ways than before. I would wake often from having really vivid dreams, so real to me I might lay in my bed for sometime wondering if it was not infact real. I would also find myself walking by myself or sitting alone and I would be talking out loud. I would be mumbling lines between my characters, expressing emotions from the conflicts or just running through a dramatic event in the story.

Even more recent months now that I have found more time to spend alone, I find a sense of comfort in these urges to play storyline after storyline in my head. I find myself wanting more than ever to just write these ideas down. I want to just write and write and write. Fame and fortune play no part in my need, my deep seeded need to express myself. To share these sensational characters with the world and more importantly myself. I fear now, not of being shunned by society but by ignoring these people talking in my head, these individuals which are so very real to me. I need to let them out, let them be heard and their pain and joy shared with anyone willing to listen.

I will be many things in my life, an employee, a friend, a family member maybe even a father but none of that will change what I know, that I am a writer. I do not write for myself, I write for the people that allow me to listen, I write for their freedom their expression.

I do not know where my writing will take me or who I will become because of it but I know now that I must share my gift because gifts are terrible things to waste. All of this time I have been searching for my passion my calling when all along it was already there, buried in fear and hidden behind so many emotional barriers.

It is time to share what I have been given and perhaps it will help even just one person even if that person is me. I am thankful for what I have been blessed with and now I will show myself that I really can achieve what I am meant to achieve.