No Doubt

I'm stuck in the past at the moment...feeling kind of odd, for some reason. Hormones? Mid-life crisis? Full moon? Who knows.

And then I had these thoughts come to mind...

* * *

A few weeks before I was due with Emily, I had an appointment with our midwife. I'd been blessed with a problem-free textbook pregnancy. She took my blood pressure and looked at my chart and told me I was finished working.

Stunned, I laughed and asked why. Her answer was firm. My blood pressure -- which had been normal for nearly 9 months -- had suddenly skyrocketed, a prelude to pre-eclampsia or any number of other bad conditions.

Hmmmm....I hadn't prepared for this.

I was going to work until my due date, or at least until I went into labor. I was in the middle of working on an assignment, having just done an interview with Bills Khakis. What had happened?

We had changed bosses and had a very stressful work night the evening before my appointment. Our story sizes kept changing on our pages which meant we had to redo headlines and edit stories to fit the new spaces. On top of it, our new boss kept rewriting/re-editting what we'd already done.

I guess all that added up to higher blood pressure.

When I walked out very subdued after my final shift, it marked the end of my full-time journalism career. I did some freelancing for several years afterwards, but that, too, ended. In essence, when I finished at the newspaper, I'd finished writing.

I turned all my attention to raising Emily and then further spread that attention to include Edward after he arrived into our lives. I didn't give my writing another thought. I was MOM.

But I'd been writing since I was 8 years old. It was such a huge part of who I was and an absorbing passion. I went through a time in my teens when I didn't go anywhere without my notebook. I spent hours and hours writing stories. It became my trademark.

My husband and family tried encouraging me, seeking to re-ignite my passion. But I wasn't motivated. I didn't have anything left in me to concentrate on my writing. I tried, but I was too dry.

Another problem developed. While I was away from writing, I began to lose confidence in my abilities.

I've always been filled with a huge amount of self-doubt. I've often thought: If I'm really any good, there's always going to be someone even better out there. That's the person who will be recognized. That's the person who will be picked. (Maybe that stems from all the times I was "picked last" in gym class or on the playground...)

I was never confident enough to be competitive...in fact, I've come to hate competition in that context.

Unfortunately, in the world of writing, you have to compete. You have to shine through -- set yourself apart somehow -- sell yourself. (I remember that well from my time as an editorial assistant at Highlights for Children where a big part of my job was screening manuscripts that had been sent in for consideration at Boyd's Mills Press, the book side of the company.)

I like writing too much to do that.

I don't see it as a craft from which to make money, and maybe that's my problem.

I see it as an art.

And artists are always filled with a certain amount of doubt.

Hold onto your soul...keep it safe. Or hold out your soul for all to see, and it's likely to feel some pain.

Still, if you never hold it out, no one will ever share the beauties it holds...

It's just takes one step, one story, one stamped envelope...and no doubt.