A Lost Passion
Rediscovering a talent lost to insecurity
When I was in the second grade, I wrote my first story. It was about a little girl who went to the pet store, in the rain, to buy a goldfish. In my little, imaginative, eight-year-old mind, this “book” was going to kick off my writing career. It didn’t, in case you were wondering, but it did stir a passion inside of me that I wouldn’t understand until years later. I had fallen in love with the art of storytelling before I even knew what storytelling could be.
I spent years writing. I wrote short stories and novels. I created characters and worlds that were well crafted and exciting (at least as well crafted and exciting as a child could make it), and I loved it. For the first time, I had found something I was good at. I wasn’t athletic or musical. I wasn’t at the top of my class academically, but I was one of the few people who understood the written word.
But that passion was lost. The older I become, the more my writings shifted from fantasy writings to college essays and papers. My childhood was coming to an end, and it was time for me to choose a college and major. English, although it seemed like the perfect choice, was never an option.
“What would you do with an English degree?” my dad would ask.
“You can’t really think you will ever publish a book, right?” my mom would ask.
My parents would ask those types of questions repeatedly until I decided that if I couldn’t be a writer, then I would build a career around English in a different way. I decided to become a high school English teacher hoping that maybe someone else would hear the calling of writing and pursue a dream that I could not.
I felt like a failure.
I let my joy and passion for writing die, but it wasn’t just because I was told that it wasn’t a great career to pursue. I quit on my own. I could have prevailed and worked hard to achieve the goals I had set for myself as a high school student, but I chose to let other people’s opinions determine my actions. I doubted myself. Faced with the reality that people might not like what I write became lazy and disinterested. The thought of having to sit down and write something that had no guarantee of being any good scared me to the core. I was afraid of wasting my time. I didn’t want to waste my life chasing a dream, but as I was actively trying to avoid having my time wasted, my time was being wasted.
If I had spent those precious years working on a project, then I could have probably published a novel by now and not have dozens of random pieces of writing saved onto my computer. Instead, I let fear push me further and further away from the goals that I had set for myself. The problem for me is that I think I have time. I don’t. I only have a limited amount of time, and I can either use that time to write and develop my talent and passion or use that time to avoid writing.
I won’t avoid writing anymore. I can’t. I don’t want to wake up someday and realize I let all those years go to waste. The fear of my time being wasted is not something that I will let dictate how I proceed with my love of writing. I will take that fear and allow it to shape the future I always dreamed of. The passion and love I have for telling stories and creating a world that is all my own needs to be rekindled.
