i write for my pleasure, not yours

my friend called me and challenged me to explain exactly what it is that keeps me from writing. in writing. i’m sure she’s not the only person to notice that I write less and less. i’d love to hide behind the fact that I work full-time and I have three kids, two of which are twin toddlers, and that I’ve just stepped to the other side of a most harrowing personal battle, but why? none of those things really matter in the scheme of things. while discussing all of this with my friend, I discovered my true feelings. i’m scared of success, and always have been. if I do what i’m doing, then there’s no pressure, no expectations, and no disappointments. if I just keep truckin’ along at my whatever-pace-I-feel pace, then the only thing I have to top is myself. selfish, huh?

therein lies the key! I am selfish when it comes to my writing. I write for myself. I write to get the words and phrases out of my head. I write for therapy and closure. and at the core of it all is the fact that I write so that I can see my thoughts. does that make sense? I write, so I can better understand myself. don’t get me wrong, I adore my readers, my fans, and my avid encouragers, but I write for me. I revel in the fact that someone finds my thoughts interesting enough to read, enjoy, laugh at, and comment on. without that validation, i’m certain that I would feel a twinge of rejection, but for every post I’ve written and shared, there are two more just like it that remain private.

thus far my posts have remained non-fiction glimpses into my personal life. i’m not ashamed or embarrassed about any of it. I did share a few things that I chose to withdraw at a later date, but that’s not because I was scared, nervous, or disgraced. I withdrew them because they contained information about other people and they aren’t as open as I am. c’est la vie, no?

another REAL reason that I have slowed in my writing is because as much as I have already shared, and want to continue to share, I feel that my children deserve a certain level of anonymity. I would like for them to grow up and make their own mistakes, publish their own stories, and not have the reputation, fame, or stigma as a blog post legend or celebrity. I want them to create their own pen name, secure their own web/blog site, and carve their own little place in the world wide web.

so, in retrospect, I have a few tangible and a few not-so-tangible reasons not to write. but they’re total malarkey in the grand scheme, even if they happen to be valid. i’ll just have to resort to writing nonfiction works about people not related to me or in my social circle. perhaps my grand hiatus is due to those very facts. perhaps I find it less entertaining and less pleasing to write because I want to write about my life and my kids, but at the same time I don’t…? quite the literary conundrum. I guess i’ll just have to get over it.

or give up on it.

(you know i’m not doing that).