When I first took to writing, it was not a Skill or a Talent. And I sure as hell didn't think that I'd keep at it as I have all these years. I say this, for it has often been a fault of mine to begin some thing (hobby, activity, project), only to later discard the thing, in favor of some other shiny experience.
Writing taught me Discipline. But it didn't happen over night.
I was steeled by the Pen, and have bled black and blue in more composition books than I can recall. It was with the Keyboard that I fortified the devastating potential of words so casually scrawled on paper scraps, napkins, and in notebooks. But it would be many years before I stumbled upon the inkling that my inkings qualified me for the title of Writer.
Sure, back when I didn't know what I was doing or saying (sometime around the age of 9), I deemed my self a Poet (a wholly different ilk, rest assured). Verily, I did not know then that I had been set on a crooked path of scribbles and, eventually, salvation.
Writing was (and is) my medicine.
One day, I threw caution to the wind and leapt into the wilds of a Journaling Web Site...And I didn't just leap...I took off. I filled electronic page after electronic page with the everything of My Life. Through the medium of Poetry and Prose, I evolved on screen. For better and worse. But mostly for the better. All happening just outside of Real Time. With little to no censorship.
At one point, I had a loyal base of readers and haters, and it was becoming apparent that, like it or not, I was (and am) a Writer.
Then, suddenly, the gift vanished. Or, rather, was tarnished by lackadaise and neglect. And it wasn't so sudden, this disappearing act. It was a process.
I remember when it happened, too. It was sometime after returning from Europa that I just up and threw in my ink- and blood- and tear-stained towel. It wasn't that I had had enough.
It might have been that I'd grown up. It might have been that I was in Love.
For all I know, the "Writer's Block" I experienced was the very sort of plot twist I needed to plant deep the Writerly Seed into my Being. For, in the space between, the Absence was filled with a great deal of Life and its tag-along Lessons.
By not writing, I learned to be the Writer that I am. (Now and evermore.)
And here I am, again, rambling across the 'board with deft strokes and linguistic pokes. Our core predilections (read: talents and attributes) can be sublimated for one's entire Life. But they can, and will, bubble and burst forth from time to time; and when this happens, one either accepts their given duty, or quickly suffocates the awakening with folly and distraction.
The latter course will only delay the liberation that is self-realization. (It can also leave a few nasty scars.)
To write is not a Choice.
It is my Charge.
I will not go gentle into the good night. I will rage, rage until I am made of light.
