It seems I’m always trying to discipline myself into better habits. This is even more so with my writing. The problem is that most of the time my inspiration can come from just about anywhere, and it’s not always appropriate to whip out my phone and note something down or write something down on paper (I still do this sometimes!). This bugs me to no end. And when I manage to catch that “wave” of new inspiration, I’m either drowning in it and completely overwhelmed or barely getting my feet wet. Sometimes I feel like I just want to write, it might not make sense, it’s just my thoughts that come together and might amount to something great or nothing at all. But the words deserve to live beyond the life I give them. And if I don’t take these chances and write, I start to feel like I’m letting myself down.

Does anyone else feel like this with their writing? An example is when I am at work, for instance, there could be 10 different things I want to say all at once because something has triggered me or inspired me or enlightened me. But I can’t because I’m at work and I already feel like everyone is watching what I do. And herein lies the problem. I feel like my creative self is trying to tell me something. I am actually experiencing one of the most creative periods of my life right now – I’m writing almost every day, I’m creating things in photoshop, I’m learning new skills. This is an excellent time for me to spread my creative “wings”. Yet, I still feel like an under-achiever, like the kid who always strived to get an A but had to settle for B+. I don’t want to be that person.

I’m also not the kind of writer that has the end goal of publishing a book. I’ve never really wanted to write a book. I like to write short stories, but I’ve never aspired to be an author of a book. I completely understand why a lot of writers do strive to achieve this goal, and it’s a very worthy goal. There is everything right with wanting to write like the authors you’ve grown up with. Yet somehow, I feel like maybe I should feel this way about writing, and I should consider writing a book or even self-publishing. But it’s not really in my heart.

I feel really strange right now. I don’t know what I really want to say, I’m just letting my fingers tap along on the keyboard. There is one thing that I am going to do this weekend though, and that is to connect an old hard drive I stored away that has all of my early poetry on it. I don’t know why I didn’t copy it over to my new disk, I think I just forgot to. But I think I’m inspired enough to write poetry again. Don’t know if I am gutsy enough to reveal any of it here, but I just want to sit with it for a while and see where it takes me.