These are the first words I have written in nearly a week. I’m being honest with myself about that. I chose not to write for that long, and I was okay with it. Nearly 2800 straight days of writing and finally, I failed. Perhaps I should have termed this blog the Ten Minute Challenge, because over time it became more that than the natural desire a writer is meant to feel for the craft. I started loving the lore of writing more than the act itself and I corrupted my desire for the craft. Even now I am not writing this for me. I am writing this because the woman I love–my life partner–asked me to write. Everyday. You see, I tried to deny her, and I did for a turn. Still, I could no more deny her than I could deny air, water, or food. Every word pulled from the ether bears the fingerprints of her desire to see me happy and for me to rediscover my passion. Until then I am bound by that promise.
I spent the last year conjuring apologies, mostly to the love of my life, and never for actually what was going on. See, I was acting opposite of my nature in a misguided effort to maintain the illusion of a great many things. I was at once the Wizard behind the curtain, the great juggler, and the man who dreams of being naked and alone on stage, exposed for the fraud he truly is. Above all else, I tried to maintain the illusion that everything was okay.
Everything was not.
So here we are at the place where I am all out of apologies and no longer capable of being someone who is not true to himself and his passion. I failed at what mattered the most, and it wasn’t the blog. Perhaps failing is what I needed to do in order to see how corrosive my life had become. Now I start over, and not in the ‘I’m going to say this for the blog and then forget it a moment later’ fashion, but in ‘tear everything down in your life and leave only what will not be stripped–leave only the foundation’ fashion. For days the words were not a part of that foundation. I spent those days on the couch in misery or playing with my kids and I continued thinking about what else I could remove and what actually mattered, what didn’t, and who I am–not who I was.
Answers are not easy to come by, but three things emerged:
- It is important to be true to your passion.
- You must be brave in all things.
- You are who you become, not who you have been. That memory of yourself is for other people. You are not bound by it in any way.
These are my truths. This is my way forward.