Week 16 Challenge - Day 3

I've done so much thinking now I'm getting too many ideas....alas that's not what I wanted to explore today.

Inspiration and muse....when I was younger (much) I found it easy to write. Ideas just seemed to come to me, and I had so much passion for the craft I couldn't stop until I had my thoughts on paper. Now I find I spend more time on the thoughts first before my pen even touches the page or my fingers the keyboard. I must have a hundred poems, all from my younger years, full of love, hatred, sadness and tranquility. I've also probably got twenty short stories....most of them are even finished! I used to win all the writing awards and my seventh grade teacher read my poems to her classes right up until she retired. She said they were hers to keep in case I ever wrote a book - she could prove she was the first to recognize my talent.

*SIGH So why does it come so hard now? What makes it so much harder to write now then before? I've been pondering this all day while staring out the window at the snow when taking breaks from work. I know some of it is evident - back then I had a lot more free time, quite a few less worries, and maybe (dare I say it) even more passion. Now I just feel...tired. I also think I've allowed myself more latitude in letting things go - I come up with a great idea for a story, I toss it around in my head for a while, and then, like lightening bugs in a jar when the morning comes, I simply let them go. I think to myself that I will never have the time to write it so why bother or put myself through the stress. The truth is I don't have the time because I don't make the time - I put other things first, things that I know for sure I can succeed at.

Hey maybe that's part of it! When I was younger with less responsibilities I took a lot more risks, didn't really care much whether I won or lost because there was always tomorrow. I'm not really like that now. I choose the definite paycheck over the possible royalties, and the definite time with my kids (or for them and all their extra curricular activities) because they need me, forgetting that I need time for myself too. Everybody wants something from me and I feel if I don't try to fulfill it I will somehow let them down, fail - the problem is I'm taking on too much and letting myself down in the process.

Huh....this is good therapy. I actually think I'm getting somewhere. Time for review:

1. I don't want to fail so I fail to even try, because if I don't put it out there and it has no way to fail I can always keep it as a "I could have done ..." Problem is if I keep that up I'll never really know. There's just as good a chance I'd succeed so why not at least try.

2. It's not that I don't have the time, it's that I don't make the time - which is a huge difference.

3. Nothing worth the reward comes without at least a little risk and I'm not as risky as I used to be. Keeping the definite paycheck is good but I'm sure there's something I can give up in order to make more room in my life for writing. I don't have to be everything to everyone but I at least have to be myself - and I do so miss that part of me that wrote with passion.

I'm afraid this list will get larger before I come up with ways to make it smaller, but at least it's a start.