April 19, 2023
Emotional State: The New (Yet Old) Shiny Me
Writing
I recently got a new computer to replace the computer I got for my last big birthday milestone (yes, my birthday is a wafer thin mint away from happening). The world builder decided a big birthday required a big present and I’m down for that! Anyway, I’m still setting it up and adding the pieces of information that are necessary (passwords, files, random settings). I also cleaned up the previous computer’s files so that I only migrated the most relevant ones. After all, why move over documents I’ll never need again?
In the many files I’ve accumulated over the past decade, I found three stories I’d written twelve years ago, one of which is a book idea. I wrote these stories after writing my very first book (which may never see the light of day), but that’s not the important part. What’s important is that I’d forgotten I’d written them. I didn’t have a clue that I’d jotted down an idea for another book two years after writing the first one or that I’d even started two other stories that could’ve become books. (I may even have intended to do so – who knows? I certainly don’t.)
Part of my journey of becoming an author is based on the statement (and what I thought was fact) that I didn’t write. I was challenged by my world builder about that and decided to prove him wrong. But how many other stories have I written in random journals or hidden away in other computers scattered around that house that I don’t even remember writing?
I’ve always known that I wanted to create and I’ve spent decades writing stories in my head – to help me fall asleep or to build on a dream once I’ve woken up or to pass the time on a journey somewhere. So I knew (and know) that I was a creator, I just didn’t write them down. And now I see that isn’t quite the case. What I remembered and what I did were two different things.
Okay, so I didn’t write every day or even consistently enough to remember that I had unfinished stories to work on. That part is true. But being a writer doesn’t require you to write every day, or even every other day. Being a writer is writing. Which I’ve done. More than once.
And more than I thought I had.
I’m not sure what I want to say with all this, besides my memory is crap and I had always been a writer, I just hadn’t realized it. So now I’m wondering what else have I missed? What other achievements have I erased from my memory as if they hadn’t happened? And why is my perception of myself so skewed?
I don’t know, but I’m about to find out. It’s time this (almost) half a century old writer to take a good long look at herself and spread it all out into the sunshine, so that who I think I am and who I really am are no longer so far apart. In a way, I’m like that new computer. I’m migrating files from my past over to the new me about to begin. And it’s exciting, because it’s new while being old. Adventurous while being comfortable.
What better way could I start the next half century of my life than with a new shiny, but in comfortable clothing?