The Passionate Embrace

When it happened, I knew it was right. It has always been right. I don't know why it took so long.

It was like coming home. A place I had been at a much younger age but let life drift me away. The chaoticness of life like a turbulent sea that swallows up everything except the day to day banalities. But I returned to it and I immersed myself in wild abandon.

This Craft Called Writing

Writing has always felt natural to me since I've been old enough to put pen to paper. Now I share through keystrokes and electronic files and publish works either online or in print for any audience to select and invest their time to read.

The muse strikes me anywhere at any time. It is not uncommon to see me staring off like this as a story is being birthed. Or for me to be found typing in the notes of my phone in the wee hours of the night.

What no one could or would take time to hear, or what I found myself simply unable to verbalize, the paper readily soaks up. It's more than ink. It's my soul bleeding out all the things it has harbored for over a half of century.

The things I've witnessed, lived and ridden the emotional tides of. Surfing through life. Sometimes on top of the wave. Sometimes the wave on top of me. It's all here and I can now summon it like Poseidon from the depths of my emotional ocean and craft into a tale to tell.

Yet, it's not always so much the story that matters. It's the telling of it, too.

I can scoop from my internal larder and spin words to make you laugh. Or cry. Or gnash your teeth. I can serve you something to make you feel akin to it or propel you away in revulsion. But at the very least, if I've done my job well, it will evoke emotion. It will touch you in places you thought untouchable. A gift from my soul to yours.

But other times I merely craft instructional articles or offerings of advice. Or share a story from my life to let you know I see you, I hear you. And I understand you.

Or maybe it's me reaching out in desperation. Overwhelmed. Lost. Feeling abandoned. Adrift. Hoping for a lifeline from a kindred soul. A need to feel connected. In isolation such connectedness will never come. But through writing and sharing, a connection happens between similar souls. The forming of a common collective that we didn't know we were until we are joined together through a written piece.

Though I most enjoy writing for the enjoyment of others, there are some pieces written for me only. Just a purging from within. An exercise to help me wrestle with my inner alligators. Some of those pieces I may return to at a later time to see if I've gained clarity or solved my problem. Some I never read again because it was a hurricane of words that just needed to explode from me and live separate from me in a quite dark space never to be read or experienced again. My laptop and my emails are the keepers of my secrets.

These are the super powers wielded by a writer. And now that I've found my way home again, I am most happily myself and feel the greatest fulfillment when I am absorbed in the passionate embrace of this craft called writing.

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Since finding Vocal, I've written with a sense of urgency and passion that I thought had long since dried up. I had succumbed to a monotonous life where each day was identically the same. Get up. Go to Work. Go Home. Sleep. Repeat. And though I am ever so grateful to have had a steady job during the entire pandemic lockdown, it occupied far too much headspace in my life. When I wasn't physically at work, my mind was still at work. I was either in a state of overwhelm stemmed by a work load that has been bigger than my ability to keep up with all these years since day one, fretting on ways to solve perceived problems which invariably end up being more urgent to me than others, or stewing over perceived issues and slights. A lot of it boils down to my personality. I have a need to have some semblance of order in my environment, and if not order, then at least a feeling of control over the disorder. I live for accolades and satisfaction. My job nor any other area of my life right now, and actually not for a good long while, provides an environment conducive for that and my personality chaffes against it. Sometimes to the point of physical illness and mental exhaustion. It's not a fun realization that you are a miserable person and likely (actually, very probably) causing misery to everyone around you. It was this realization that spurred me back to creating prose to express the pain trapped inside. To deal with the helplessness, despair, insignificance and lack of self worth. And from that therapeutic prose came the break in the dam holding back my creativity. I have been writing daily since. It's given me a sense of purpose and provided an area in my life where I can enjoy feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment. I have come home. And now, I can at last feel more blessed than stressed.