Passion Finds A Way

What happens when we lie on our passions? I think I've acquired some experience to help in answering this question. You see, I am a writer. Except, writers write. Don't they?

It's been almost a year since I made an arrangement with my wife, who was trusting and supportive enough to believe that I could fulfill my promise to make a more than respectable attempt to achieve regular publication of some sort. I was to write every day like it was a job, instead of a clock-punching Sisyphean position with some bland company. All that would be required of me would be to sit in front of my computer every day and write for as long as it took, until something was ready for submission somewhere.

For a short while I lived up to expectations. I wrote a short story, edited it, and sent it out to one publication for which I believed it to be suited. I was wrong. I didn't try so much after that.

It wasn't necessarily the rejection which crippled my drive. It was self-doubt upon self-doubt which weighed me down until I crashed. The rejection was merely a slight breeze to the severely unsteady tower of my creative confidence. While down my traumatized writer's spirit transformed into apathy. I was immersed in a smothering hopelessness.

Regardless of how little faith I held for my own abilities and how little I cared about my seemingly illusory potential, I still had some passion for writing. Somehow I managed to find my way here, to the blog, every now and then. The occasional beats of my weak writer's heart are evident in the archive of the posts from the last several months, here on Random-Verbosity. A few blips on the EKG.

Some fraction of a drive must mean there's still some hope. Even now. I still can't quite see past my doubt and the apathy produced by it, but I write on because I can, I have to, and, more importantly, I desperately want to. Something drives me in spite of myself.

What happens when we lie on our passions? I think, if they're strong enough initially, energy still escapes. Something finds a way past obstruction and the light of hope remains lit. I'm trying to follow it now. One keystroke after another. Another word to follow the last. I'm slowly finding my writing legs again.

Time to focus on sufficiently honoring a nearly year old promise, not minding if the result is success or failure. Time for true, fervent effort.

From now on this writer writes.