Writing Blind and Getting Lost

I’m writing. Yes, sure, I’m writing. But I am writing blind. I don’t know what I’m doing.

 

Let’s just get that out there in the open:

 

I do not know what I am doing.

 

Are you with me?

long hair girl blindfolded

photo courtesy pixaby.com

There’s this: I am trying to become a person who makes a living from writing. How? By subleasing my bungalow in Los Angeles and dipping out to Italy for a month while I organize my thoughts, finish my book, and try to get various short stories or articles published.

Is this a thing? Is this a thing that people do when they’re utterly lost? And am I utterly lost? I don’t know.

Sometimes I feel like I am doing the necessary things to get somewhere, but sometimes—times like now—I am just fighting to shut up the inner laughter ceaseless in its attempt to mock what I’ve done with my life thus far.

People tell me I’m brave or that it’s good to pursue my creativity, but it’s hard to hear when my future is so amazingly unpredictable.

Mostly, I think I’m just not sure what makes me happy, so I’m trying to find it. I comfort myself reasoning that many other people don’t seem to be questing like me because (1) they’ve either found their thing or (2) they’ve just settled for a level of contentment I’m not willing to accept.

I hope it’s that I haven’t yet found my thing. I hope that all this searching isn’t in vain. What I fear is that I will find success as a writer (and I will, damnit!), and find that I am still unfulfilled.

In all this I must remember that I can’t make one thing (writing success in my case) my entire raison-d’etre. Real success is an inside job, and amidst all my writing goals I need continuously to work on myself—my personal, physical, and relational health.

We must constantly ask the question: Why do we want to be alive?

Sometimes we forget that when we wake up, we are choosing to say yes. If we don’t know the reason why we’re saying yes, then we’re just going through motions.

tousled white bed sheets

just get out of bed just get out of bed just get out of bed. photo: pixaby.com

I am writing here amidst this trashpile of doubt rising all around me because I’m trying to pin something down. I’m not sure what it is, but my hope is that as I write, I will at least be able to say that I am “doing writing.”

I am putting something out there and making some part of myself vulnerable and in penning things down to the world, hopefully I pinn myself down to this winding and unforeseeable path I’ve chosen.

I just want my feet to be strong and keep moving.

When I reach wherever it is I’m going, I want to know I went there on purpose. And with purpose, too.

 


 

What do you do when you doubt your path? How do you get motivated and deal with the uncertainty?

 

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