Just Another Struggling Writer

Hello friends and welcome to another foolhardy edition of Just Another Struggling Writer. I’m just another struggling writer. 

Friends, do you remember a while back when I talked about Type A personalities, people who have to always be on the go, doing something, never not working and how I have come to accept that I am just not one of them because I like to go home at the end of my day job shift and maybe play video games once in a while rather than continue to work?

I think I may have grossly misjudged myself. 

Yesterday, I got the latest in a long string of stressful day-job related news that will certainly mean my workload is going to be increasing, yet again, for the foreseeable future. 

And this morning I woke up, watched a few videos from some of my current favorite content creators, and told myself, you know what, I could be doing more. I’m not working hard enough. There is so much I want to do. Why not?

Why not?

If that sounds like absolute insanity… well, you might be right. I have so, so much going on right now. So much to do, so vanishingly little time.

A theme I have tried to embrace this year is letting go the fear of failing. It hasn’t always been easy; chronic anxiety and depression rarely allows the things we love doing to go accosted. But, it’s been an instructive lesson. I launched a podcast earlier this year with absolutely no expectation other than to have fun with it and to read more. And, though it’s been a lot of work and not something I have always been able to keep up with consistently, I have had fun and I have certainly read a hell of a lot more. By letting go of the expectation that I can’t produce content unless someone (preferably many someones) consumes it, I was able to be myself and just enjoy the process.

There shouldn’t be any reason I can’t apply the same reasoning to the rest of my creative endeavors. Maybe without such lofty expectations weighing them down, they’ll actually have a chance to soar. 

So, I’m just… gonna go ahead and do it. What is it? I don’t know yet, but if I have an idea, I’m not going to let it languish in the cesspit of my anxiety. I’m gonna just…fuckin go for it. Maybe it be a hilarious train wreck, maybe it’ll be an experiment that does well but isn’t sustainable, and maybe it’ll be the greatest thing I’ve done since admitting to myself that I want to be a writer. 

I’ll never know if I don’t take the leap. 

So, here I go, throwing my fears off the side of a cliff and leaping off after them. I may join them at the bottom, but my eyes are on the sky. 

Until next time friends, may your writing be plenty and your struggles be few. 

Kerry Share