For more than two months, I have been absent here, while my ‘drafts’ folder is pretty bulging. What is going on? Why am I struggling with my words? I’ve written for 10 years week in / week out and yet something now is making me question my paragraphs and their meaning.
I want to write. It’s not as if I’m sitting here with a gun to my head, forcing out word after word. And I have a surplus of ideas as I walk up and down to Hampstead twice a day. However, when I review my output, I’m (perhaps overly) critical and (therefore) too disappointed to fling it out into the ether.
When those people ask – why don’t you write your blog anymore? I mumble some sort of weak response and slink away before they can dig for more.
Wondering how much of this is about expectation, the boy and I were discussing this very topic as we strode up the hill yesterday morning. How much of our lives are dictated by the expectation others ‘put’ on us? We’re expected to do this and that and be here and there and it seems that, at times, this expectation might be a bit of a trap – random potholes in the road ahead?
*Get a grip* I hear you cry … which is why I’m sitting here yet again filling my screen.
When I think about all those positives associated with the online world, self-publishing – for me – is the icing on the cake. Pressing POST on an illustration, photo, comment or piece of writing is the immediate form of validation any creative needs. But, of course, the flip side to all this is that fear of failing. The feeling that just perhaps no one will think what you have created is valid and true and that the point you have waxed lyrical about doesn’t strike a chord with a single person out there.
But that’s when your inner voice needs to step up and be that assertive boss in your head.
There is only one thing worse than no one appreciating your words. And that’s not writing them at all.
