I haven’t been blogging as much; if you’ve been following me for some time, you know that this year has been worse than usual. There has been a lot of rough patches over this year, starting as early as January that took a while for me to recover from.

Mainly; I deleted most of my work from Evernote and Google Drive. Years of work – everything from story ideas to research, reviews, stories and the major work was the book I was working on. I was more than 100 pages in and it’s gone.

Sometimes I regret deleting it all in that heated moment. I was frustrated with myself, the direction I was going in and the decisions I’d made to get myself there. In some ways, it allowed me to let go of the resentment that lingered due to my lack of success with writing.

When you say to folks “I’m a writer” there are lots of expectations and assumptions about your success or lack thereof. I’ve been blogging since Xanga and LiveJournal; managed forums and was always very much a part of whatever social media platform was hot at the moment but I had nothing to show for it.

I started to use writing as a way to vent, I would only prioritize writing when I was upset so it definitely reflected in the development in whatever I wrote and I hated reading it, editing it and I refused to share it.

I lacked confidence in my ability to write, I was unfocused, I was hurting and I was ready to give up on most things – taking the time off work for myself was a very necessary, very healing process and though I have some reservations about it, I know I made the best decision for me and my family at the time and I’m happy I allowed myself the space I needed to get back on track – to remember my loves and passions and be able to revel in them.

It’s been freeing.

I feel more at home with the term “writer” now, I connect to it more. It no longer is something I say softly and hold my breath for the inevitable snarky comment.

I am a writer.

It’s not all I am but it’s been one of the few constants in my life. Now, I’m so free and open to wherever it takes me – it has made a huge impact on my confidence when writing. I’m okay with writing bad stories, as long as I write them and make way for better ones.

Some of the best advice I got this year came from one of my favorite authors Daniel Jose Older (Shadowshaper – read it and get your life) who simply said “write the fucking story” and I intend to.