My Dream Has Always Been to Write, but I Let Life Get in the Way, a lot!

I have loved writing since I was a kid. I would stay in from recess to finish stories. I would write at home in the playroom, just me, a play desk, and my imagination. I would stay up late writing stories in high school and college. I just wanted to write and create stories and worlds and interesting people.

So, yes, writing has always been my dream. I've come back to it again and again throughout the years, but I have let life get in the way of truly pursuing that dream. Let's get into the story, shall we?

Realizing My Dream to Write after High School

Even though I loved writing for the longest time, I didn't understand how much a part of me it was, and that it truly was my dream. Not fresh out of high school, anyway.

When I graduated high school, I had no idea what I really wanted to do with my life, what career field I wanted to join, what I wanted to spend forever doing. Unfortunately, my school didn't have the best student councilors--I have a lot of criticism in how they handled things, especially with me. And maybe in their minds I was one not to be worried about. I was a good kid and had great grades, graduating with high honors. But I was also a first generation college grad, and before I entered college I had no idea what to do. When I went to my assigned counselor for help, all I received was, "Just look at the bulletin board."

And all those career assessments I took throughout school were extremely unhelpful. Every one of them said I should become a social worker. Me? Ha! I was so shy. And that, although a very noble career, did not interest me at all. I wanted something creative, interesting, fun.

After high school I thought I had to have a career path before I entered college--remember, first generation college student here. I had no idea how it all worked. I didn't know I could go to college and explore a bit and figure it out. I didn't understand you had to take a bunch of general classes anyway. So I didn't go to college when the fall semester started.

I was very frustrated with myself. I wanted to be on some trajectory with my life. I wanted to head toward something. I wanted to go to college. So I kept praying, "Heavenly Father, what should I do."

Late one night when I was headed home from a friend's house, I prayed again. But this time I received a prompting to change my prayer, and I did. "Heavenly Father, what would I be happy doing?" And the answer came so easily: writing.

So I enrolled in college and studied creative writing and later added technical communications, because classes for an editing minor were not offered frequently enough by the time I went to declare my minor.

I loved my creative classes--poetry, fiction writing, editing, literature--a lot of literature classes--I read a lot of books. But by the time graduation came, I felt I needed a more stable job than becoming an author. So I went into the corporate world.

Working Class Girl

In my corporate life, I started in copywriting and moved my way through because of some unexpected and great opportunities. Staying in the marketing department, I learned blog writing, social media marketing, web design and SEO, data and survey analysis, storytelling, project management, etc., etc.

Before I left the corporate life, I was a director of corporate communications, having had opportunities to oversee internal communications and intranet, market research, survey management, external communications management, crisis communication coordination, corporate storytelling, and response management.

I had stepped away from writing, almost completely, only using my skills for SOP creations and training programs.

You know those yearly interviews a lot of companies have where you meet with either your boss or someone in HR and talk about your goals for the future? In every meeting I every had, I talked about growing in the company, but in the back of my mind I truly wanted to quit and just write books.

Leaving the Corporate Life

In 2018 I did quit. I left the corporate life. But not to pursue my writing dream. I was burned out. I quit because after a major anxiety episode, my husband told me he didn't want me working at my job anymore. He didn't like seeing me so stressed all the time.

I quit because of anxiety. And I never went back. I probably should have. We've struggled a lot with money over the last few years and it all could have been made much easier if I went back to work. But it never felt right. After lots of talks with Scott, we both decided it wasn't right for various reasons.

After I quit my last job, I did pour myself into writing. Scott got deployed with the Air Force and I stayed back and tried to finish a book I'd been working on for years. And I did finish it, the first draft anyway.

After Scott finished his deployment, he decided to take a job in the civilian sector of the military and went to work in Afghanistan for over a year. During this time, I focused on editing my book. I enjoyed the time I had to write. And I thought and hoped I would be ready to publish my book before Scott got home. But then I ran into a problem. The book itself was the problem. I knew it was off. I was frustrated with it. Editing it was aggravating. I needed to fix it, but I wasn't sure how.

So I decided to send it out to beta readers, knowing it wasn't ready for beta readers, but also knowing I needed some clarity. And when the feedback came back, I felt I had to start over. Not completely over. The content was there, but it needed some new life, new arranging.

While Scott was stuck in Afghanistan and I was stuck in quarantine from the global pandemic, I played with sticky notes and created a new map for my story. But that's where it stayed for a long time--in sticky note form in a file folder while life kept moving.

Scott came home. We moved to Missouri. We started and closed a business. We had a baby. And then we moved to Pennsylvania.

Picking Up Writing Again, and Again

It was when Berkley was not even one year old that I sat down at my keyboard again and promised myself that I would finish my book. I used NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) to propel myself forward, dedicated to reading my daily and weekly word counts. And by they time November was over, I had half a novel. And I was really happy with it.

And then life happened, again. Berkley turned one. We dealt with some frustrating issues leftover from our gaming trailer business we had years before. We moved back to Missouri. And I didn't write a single word. In fact, I stopped blogging and posting to social media. Life just became busy, and I wasn't sure what to say.

November's NaNoWriMo came again and I decided I wanted to use the month to at least finish my book. And I did. I dedicated time each day to writing. I got in my word counts until the book came to its conclusion.

I stepped away from my keyboard happy, but left it at that.

That was when Berkley was almost two. She's almost four now. Two years have gone by since I finished my book.

What I remember: It felt so good. I knew after writing my last sentence, my last word, that this was the right story. It had finally come together. It flowed out of me in a way that was magical.

But I didn't go back to it. I just stopped writing.

Life got in the way.

Life Gets In the Way Sometimes

Life gets in the way of our passions and creativity sometimes. I've had a lot going on. Over the last few years, we have struggled financially. Scott had a great job and then he didn't. We had land that we loved and hoped to stay on forever, but we ended up selling it and moving away. We have an only child who requires a lot of attention, I mean, she demands it, literally. (Sassy pants. I love her.)

For a long time I have felt I can't write. There's too much going on. Too much that requires my attention. I have felt guilty when I have sat down to write. And I haven't been able to get my body and mind to calm down enough to let me write and be creative. I've had to always be doing something "productive," something that I hoped would get us out of our current situation.

What I'm feeling at this moment: That's okay. It's all okay.

The world would say, "Do it anyway." If you do it, your flow will come back. You need to do it for you. Do it because you need it.

But I didn't need it. I needed to focus on other things. I had other ways of winding down and making myself happy. Writing wasn't one of them. I wish it was, but at the time, I couldn't allow myself to sit and write, and it really made me feel more stressed to even consider it.

Things are different now. We're in a much better place. We're working toward some exciting goals. I'm writing again and loving it.

But it has not been easy to start again. It wasn't easy to post my first post to Instagram in forever. It wasn't easy to post my first blog post. It wasn't easy to sit down and start editing my book again.

But I'm ready now. And I have had great encouragement from my husband.

I had talked about it for weeks, about what I wanted to do, what i felt I needed to do. But I was nervous. It had been so long. Scott said, "Just do it. The longer you put it off, the harder it will be. But don't think about it. Just do it."

So I did. I posted on Instagram for the first time in a couple years. It was a very simple post, but it was something.

And then I started blogging. And then I started editing my book and loving it. It's so good. Those two years of doing NaNoWriMo were incredible. I love my book.

And now I'm working on some new things that I'm so excited for, and I can't way to share them with you.

Let Life Get in the Way; It's Okay

What I hope you get from this post is this: It's okay to not be ready to work on that passion or creative interest right now. I get it. Sometimes you need to focus on life. But I hope that when the right time does come, when things calm down a bit and you can finally let your body and mind go in that direction that you just do it. It won't be easy. It will be hard to take the first step. But you'll be grateful you made it. And you'll be happier doing what you love.