Dear Monique,
If you want to write a book, you should (so I've been told). What about? Idk. But sometimes you gotta throw some eggs against the wall until something sticks.
Another thing I discovered in group therapy, or remembered really, was that once upon a time I wanted to be a writer. I loved creating little stories and imaging new worlds. I would never want writing time to end in school and would create my stories on PowerPoint. (I thought it was more fun to create custom slides and colors to reflect the chapters than just typing my thoughts into Word. 😂). To this day, those stories are saved on floppy discs…I just haven’t done anything to transfer them to a cloud or flash drive. (It is what it is). I was even on the school newspaper in high school and was considering going to Mizzou for their journalism program. I couldn’t tell you when or what caused me to change course and abandon all of those hopes and dreams. All I could recall is that all of a sudden I was pursuing a career in sports medicine (lol)…and now I’m not even doing that.
Reflecting on all of that broke me a little lot. What would younger me think? Would she be sad? Mad? Indifferent? I could have spent hours wondering and agonizing about it. And what did it get me? Nothing. Nothing to change what was done, and nothing to change what I could do now-if I kept dwelling on just THINKING.
So, when I eventually got out of the twister I swept myself in, I got to thinking, “what if I did start writing again…and what if I wrote a book…what would I write about?”
I thought well, I’m not one to have the most original ideas for fiction, so that’s out. Ok, that leaves non-fiction…hmmm. Well, I am certainly no expert on a particular subject matter and even if I was, I'm not the best at presenting research and back-up. I just want people to believe me when I say I know especially when I know I know. Ya know? 😅 ok, so that leaves a memoir/personal reflection. I don’t have to world-build and have original story ideas, nor do I need to prove that to anyone what I’m saying because it’s all my thoughts and stories and memories. Ok. a memoir of sorts….How the hell was I going to write that?How the hell am I writing that? What does that look like? What does it mean?
Writing to my younger self awakened and continues to awaken something in me when I do it. As cliché as it sounds, it did and does and I don’t care if you’re rolling your eyes. (I actually do, so please don’t do it when you aren’t reading this okay? k thanks.) And maybe that’s all that I need in this point and time as I tap back into something I used to love so much. I need to be reawakened and nurture the passion for a spell before the real stories and thoughts I’m meant to share come to light. To be determined as we merrily scroll along.