The Time To Write Is Now

Happy 7th of July everyone.  These past few weeks have been a challenge of highs and lows for the Kawaii family, and this past week has been especially trying.  Filled with the celebration of birthdays, the grief and sadness of hospital visits, the changes and trials of helping someone start a new chapter of their life and all the regular comings and goings of good news and bad have made June and the start of July a muddle of emotion and exhaustion.

It is in these particularly trying times when I begin to feel the urge to either curl into a corner and vegetate, or become inspired by the current collage of events to write until sleep finds me or my fingers fall off (luckily the latter doesn't happen very often).  Currently I am looking over a mass of writing projects and ideas, an almost-finished novel coupled with an almost-finished short story, article ideas and assignments... and wondering where the drive is going to come from to complete them all.  It is good to have so much work scattered over my desk, which has been empty for several weeks, and at the same time it is overwhelming to think that I just might be able to make a living at stringing words into sentences.

The whole adventure of writing is such a unique experience and to be able to do it is something that only a few get to experience outside of hidden journals and spiral-bound notebooks.  I am blessed to have so many friends and family rooting for me, to have met such wonderful writers throughout my ventures who are not only in the same boat as me but who are also trying to find the oars and outboard motor to move forward, and to have such an amazing friend and husband rooting me on and encouraging me to stick with it.

As we sat by the lake on Independence Day and watched the fireworks with family, I realized that although there is much sadness, grief and stress around us, I have been granted the gift of my own independence.  I have the freedom to be, do and say exactly what I want and have found many readers who find my thoughts to be comforting, humerus and a welcome break from their own tedious lives.  It is an amazing thing to be able to live one's dream, and while the whole endeavor seems daunting when you're standing at the beginning and trying to discover which of the millions of opportunities you should pluck from the skies and call your own, it is an amazingly wonderful problem to have.

I hope each of you find those things that you were born to love and do them as freely and often as possible.

Currently Reading:

The Last Dragon