I’ve gotten used to writing every day. It’s what I do. I come home from work. Get dinner and/or a beer, sit down in front of the computer and try and make words appear on the screen.
It’s been a long, long time since I’ve felt that way. For the last two years, writing has been a special occasion; something I do for holidays or events or because I really have nothing better to do.
But now writing has turned into part of my day, as opposed to something that I could do today.
But it still feels very fragile, like if I stopped, even for a day, I would fall out of the habit and go back to the way things used to be. And that scares me so much. I don’t want to go back to that. Writing is so embedded in who I am and I how I think of myself, that I can’t believe how far I let it slip away from me before. I can’t believe how I almost let it fall away completely.
You can’t just call yourself a writer, but never produce anything. I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to be the person who tries to skate by on the stories that he wrote five years ago.
But that’s what I’ve been doing. I love the stories in my book, but I wrote them a lifetime ago. You should, by all means, read them and enjoy them. But I was a different person then, in the long ago. I want to write stories that reflect who I am now.
So I’m going to keep moving forward, laying down words, one after the other.
It takes 66 days to build a good habit. I have 34 more days to go.
And I’m going to make it.
-D-
