I didn’t always want to be a writer. In elementary school I
wanted to be a ballet dancer, which I’m sure is typical of most eight-year-old
girls. In middle school I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was more concerned
with figuring out how to wear my hair and why I had such a weird laugh. In high
school I joined the school newspaper and I realized I was good at writing and I
wanted to be a reporter. I imagined myself becoming the next Christiane Amanpour
and reporting chaos from the Middle East, drug cartels in South America, and
the horrid conditions plaguing Africa. As the big college decision began to
loom over me, I realized that the likelihood of being Amanpour wouldn’t happen
and I needed to change my mind.
As I entered college I decided that I could not imagine not
taking another English class again. So I signed up for more and more English
classes and realized that I can’t really do anything with a degree in English.
So I double majored in Education and fell in love with helping “the future.”
I’ve been teaching for five years and while I love it, and I know at my core I
am a teacher, I can’t help but wonder what else I was created for.
I know I’m meant to write. I know that I have this innate
desire to communicate, through writing, my deepest thoughts, my heartaches, my
accomplishments, and these characters bouncing around in my head. But I can’t
help but wonder, does anyone even care? I want to write something that moves
people, that challenges view points, that forces people to discover more, and
that makes people think. At the sake of being vulnerable, I want to affect
people, but I’m not sure I can. And I’m not begging for compliments, I’m simply
stating a fear that I have.
And I’m unsure as to what scale I want to write. Do I want
to be a best selling author? Do I want to be an editor at a magazine? Do I want
to write, in my free time, for blogs and newspapers? Do I want to write for me,
and only me? I’m not sure. Although I do know I have lofty goals and yes, it
would be great to see my name on the best seller’s list, but is that the point
of writing? I don’t think so. What I do know, in all this questioning, is that
I love writing. I was created to write. I was made to do this. At what extent,
I don’t know. But I do know that I will continue to write, if it’s only for me
or for a larger stage.
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
-Ernest Hemingway
