I love writing.
I like to turn the radio on to some soft, background music and let my mind drift into the page. I am somehow able to pull ideas out of a blank screen and keyboard letters and I know this because I once had a boss in a dead-end job tell me that looking at the screen and reading my work was like you could reach in and pull out all of this “goo.” I don’t think she meant it as a good thing, particularly as I was in the computer industry, but that’s nevertheless how I took it. What’s interesting about this is that I have never considered myself a creative person. When I watch those comedy improv shows I am always at a complete loss for how, given a handful of words on a card, actors and actresses are able to collaborate with one another straight off the cuff to come up with an entire scene in just a few moments. Holy cow! Same with those great cooking shows where amateurs are given a list of ingredients, and a time limit, and told to impress Michelin star judges. Holy moly. How they come up with these dazzling recipes, and make them taste good, in such a short time is beyond me. Nevertheless, my hands on a typing keyboard are like Nina Simone in front of a piano…. zipping across while I am almost an observer. The content? Musings, observations, feelings, ideas, beliefs, and so forth.
Writing is therapeutic and for those of you looking for a productive escape I highly recommend it. Something about bringing what’s in your head to life in black and white is both exhilarating and comforting, rewarding but makes you thirst for more, expresses personal individuality but is common place. The beauty of writing is that it can take any format you’d like. An essay, a 500-word blog post, a miniature short story, a script, a food/fashion/show critique, a poem, a letter to your future self, a journal, a song, a prayer, a love story, the possibilities are, literally and literarily, endless. Perhaps this is your year to write a book of poetry? You could also do it anywhere anytime, on your phone, a journal by your bedside, on your laptop in the car for a few precious minutes, or on a napkin in a restaurant. There are no rules! If you want to make it a job you will need to “feed the animal” as they say but that’s only about 50% of the time and for really any work you do, creative or otherwise, you’ll get to spend some of your time doing what it is you love and the rest of it doing the work to support that.
So, find a way to make writing a part of your life. It doesn’t have to go anywhere, no one has to see it, it will be your therapeutic secret.
