My first memory of writing for myself was in 1974, when I was 12 years old. I was a bundle of jumbled feelings and thoughts, so I turned to the first page in a new notebook and wrote:
Don’t keep it all bottled up inside,
Don’t run away and try to hide
From feelings and worries of present and past,
And happy times that may never last.
It doesn’t pay to keep them so tight
So close and secure, never to fight.
You’ll have to trust her some day
To help you along in every way.
The poem continues for three more stanzas about trusting someone to hear my pain. I did not have the courage to heed my own words, not for a very long time. Instead, I wrote poetry, rants, essays, fragments, and other word collections to pour myself onto the page.
Through high school, college, and into my working life, I wrote for myself in the shadows while performing in the spotlight for others, doing what they expected. Writing was a large part of most jobs I held, particularly those in learning and leadership development. What I wrote was good, often mass-produced and widely distributed. It was creative. It was grounded in rigorous research. And it was work for hire.
While my head was in it, and a little of my heart, the work was always for someone else, somewhere outside myself. What longed to find its way into the world was my story, the story only I could tell: through poetry, music, the stage, the screen, in novels.
Years after college and seminary, I stepped fully into the writing space when I enrolled in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Naropa University. Still working more than full-time, I attended virtual classes year-round and weeklong low-residency sessions on campus in the summers. At almost 40, I was the proverbial kid in the candy store. Writing, readings, lectures, meditation, print shop, Wabi-sabi, travel journals, screenplays. I devoured all of it, and I always left hungry for more.
Now, nearly 25 years later, here I am: back at the keyboard, still composing, cultivating this writing life. And this time, I have all the time in the world to work only on my own work.
I’ve chosen to keep our Come What May blog as the same platform for my writing journey. It feels all the more fitting because this writing business is not easy. Sure, the words may come easily at times, even the edits and refining, but the plunge into the published-author world is anything but easy.
So, Come What May, I will write, hoping my words may yet see the light of someone else’s day.
To access some of my professional writing, visit the Publications and Selected Works pages on this site.
Come What May 