My Relationship with Writing

I love to tell stories. Ideas come to me in my dreams, in the shower, and even on the toilet (I know I'm not alone there). For all my enjoyment telling stories, I have yet to officially tell my own. I guess part of my love of storytelling is the fact that it doesn't have to be about me. Sort of an escape from my own reality. Sometimes it's nice to create the life for a character that you, yourself, would've found exciting. There are certainly several reasons I enjoy writing. It's a release. It exercises the brain. It's outright fun. Okay, yes, I like writing. I've made that abundantly clear. I'm probably just stalling. So here goes, my story. For you.

My earliest memory of writing has to be...elementary school. As a kid I loved to read. I loved it right up until book reports became a thing. Then I was no longer reading for enjoyment, but for school. And I did not enjoy school. Therefore, I did not enjoy reading because I knew I would be forced to write about what I read. It would be years before this became a pleasurable task for me. So there I am, in 3rd and 4th grade, reading children's books assigned in class, and staying up late, slowly writing summaries of what I read. The joy of reading being drained from me. Negative connotation developing in my mind when it came to reading and writing here.

It never occurred to me that writing could be an outlet for one's feelings, and as a developing youth, I had plenty of those. With only a younger brother and full-time working parents, I had no idea how to express those feelings. So, I bottled them up. Kept them to myself. Nobody asked me how I felt or why, so I figured no one cared. Because if they did, they would ask, right?

I asked my mother to buy me a diary once. I watched shows with protagonists who journaled regularly. I thought, maybe that was something worth trying. It wasn't. I didn't manage to write more than two sentences. I think I was self-conscious. I didn't want someone to find it and criticize me for expressing my feelings. Whether it was about a girl I had a crush on or a bully I encountered, I still kept it to myself. The diary went unused.

At that point, I much preferred playing video games. RPGs and Action-Adventure genres that stuck you in the middle of new worlds and stories. My parents were less than delighted to see me so eager to sit in front of a television. They figured I was destined to rot my brain.

But how does a 9-year old explain to his parents that he's gravitating toward video games for the same reason he loved books? Because they were worlds you could escape to. They didn't demand homework, and they allowed you to immerse your mind in a new world. To me, video games were digital, visual books you interacted with.

Fast-forward a few years. I'm in middle school English class, and we're assigned homework: write a poem. It can be any poem, around any particular theme. I think I wrote about nature. Flowers, roses, it's hard to truly remember the content. What I will never forget was how easily it came to me and the praise from my teacher after turning it in and having it graded.

Cool, I thought. A good grade, really need those. The poem was easy and somewhat fun to write. But I'm a middle school boy, poetry is not supposed to be one of my interests. The last thing I wanted was to be antagonized by my peers for having a hobby that wasn't sports, music, games, or girls. Still, I would not forget this newfound knack for poetry, but it would be placed in the back of my mind. Lest someone found out and I'm made the butt of several jokes. Kids are mean.

High school was a little more...opportunistic for me. My love of reading was back and writing came in the form of a little game I played with my best friend at the time. We would write little raps and recite them in comparative competition. When I discovered rapping was basically rhythmic poetry, I was able to have some fun with it. Unfortunately, we didn't take this game very seriously, otherwise, I'd likely have a very different career today. English class was much easier. I allowed myself to really enjoy the reading assignments and snagged a little spotlight in class when the teacher called on one of us to interpret what we read. I was able to really comprehend the messages the author was trying to convey in their writing and my teacher took notice. I didn't think much of it. I should have.

The next leap in my writing came while dating a girl late in high school. We wrote little poems to each other. Why? I'm not sure. It was a complicated relationship. A lot of feelings were said but even more went unsaid. I think I had so much pent-up emotion inside that I just needed to let it out. I would find blank composition notebooks around the house and just cover pages in poems describing my angst toward my life and my relationship.

As I reached the end of high school, I had to start thinking about college and a career afterward. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I thought maybe psychology would be a viable route. I liked to help people. I enjoyed allowing others to vent to me and be a soundboard for them to bounce ideas off of. My father managed to make a living this way. My mother nudged me toward engineering. More money for less school. I hated math and I loved reading and writing. I wasn't sure how this was going to work but I knew writing wasn't a traditional career path in the eyes of my family. So, once again, writing took a backseat to life. I still read books pretty often. Discovering a love for several authors such as Anne Rice, William Dietrich, JK Rowling, Suzanne Collins, and eventually Stephen King. But the thought of doing what they did for a living hadn't even crossed my mind.

So, a semester later, engineering was looking like a bust. As I said, math and I just don't vibe, no matter how much I wanted it to. I frequented my guidance counselor's office hours, trying to find a new academic home. After inquiring about my previous studies, English came up. It was, after all, my best subject. So, career choices here: Teaching? Journalism? They sounded intriguing. None were chosen. The full scope of potential behind these career choices was lost on me. Travel to another country, teach English to kids of other cultures; see sights and scenes, and write reports on what I found and experienced. Saying it now, these would've been phenomenal career paths. But, I didn't have the vision at the time, and nobody in my life ever thought to press the notion upon me. Missed opportunities. Wasn't meant to be. The universe had a plan for me. Still does.

After college, I ended up working in my father's mental health practice. Nearly came full circle here. Just wasn't treating patients. Running the day-to-day admin stuff instead. Much less exciting. Life was growing more and more mundane and I found myself asking, was this it? Where was the spark that life was supposed to provide? Where was the passion I ought to feel about what I did with my spare time? It was nowhere to be found.

One random day, my best friend and I met up at a bar to catch up. We hadn't hung out in some time. While chatting, she and I somehow got on the topic of superheroes and managed to create a character of our own. We enjoyed the superhero shows on Netflix at the time and felt we could create a story of our own. So we did, on a napkin at a bar at 1 in the afternoon. Even thought of another friend who could illustrate for us. We had just outlined our very own graphic novel. And I was going to author it! A pipe-dream mostly. It was a fun little activity but quickly fell to the waist-side from there. Back to the monotony of everyday life.

Struggling to fend off depression, my "big sister"/business partner and I chatted about how to find some new purpose in life. I was so far away from realizing any potential that I was beginning to think I didn't have any to begin with.

"What do you like to do?" she asked one morning. "And I don't mean play video games."

It was a question I had to sleep on. It had been a year or so since that day at the bar, but it came back to me during a shower. I do some of my best thinking there, likely because I'm completely disconnected from any distractions the modern world provides so abundantly. As the warm water washed over my face, I remembered my co-created superhero, and how much fun I had brainstorming her story. I went back to work the next day more excited than I had been in years. My passion may have just revealed itself. I told my partner about my revelation, and to my surprise, she was not only supportive but wrote as a hobby as well. She encouraged me to pursue my story and I did. For the next few years, around the ups and downs of life, I toiled away at my superhero novel. More so for the fun and escape, than to actually bring it to life. Don't get me wrong, I want this project realized. I've spent too much time and energy on it not to.

This was my first true step toward taking my relationship with writing seriously. Along with my novel, ideas for short stories, screenplays, poems, and songs flowed freely from my mind. Stories came to me in dreams and the shows/movies I once watched for fun, I now studied for inspiration. Books by my favorite authors, old and new, became examples of writing styles I could draw from to develop my own.

I have yet to bring any of my creations to publication. I find myself frequently in that difficult spot of beginning several projects but struggling to finish. I just have too many ideas that I want to put down and flesh out. But, I know I must finish. Because at the end of the day, I don't just want to create stories for the fun of it. I believe this world is in desperate need of positivity, light, and love. And I want to spread all of it through my writing on as many platforms as I can manage. I want to inspire others to be their best selves through the means that I have at my disposal. My words, my mind, and my spirit.

My relationship with writing grows stronger every day. We've been through so much together. Though I would have liked to realize this love earlier in life, I have no regrets about how we came together. Everything happens for a reason. I don't think I was meant to share my story until today. I needed to find my writing community. But, I'm here now! Ready to share it all!

H