I’ve been rattling off this phrase to … well … everyone lately: “Writing is my gift, but not my passion.” Only recently have I come to understand how stuck these very words have been keeping me. I'll explain.

I’m a writer, but I’m not

I’m one of those people who somehow retained all of the useless grammar rules from grammar school, who actually knows a song comprising all the prepositions starting with the letter “a,” and who has a long list of pet peeves having to do with misspelling and mis-punctuation. Naturally, I was a college English major. I can edit with my eyes closed. It’s all just so … easy. Always has been.

Plus, I express myself far better in writing than verbally. I attribute it to the fact that I was a shy kid, forever reticent to use my voice. If I had something profound, confrontational, or relatively long-winded to say, I’d pass a note, send a letter, write an e-mail. Still do, in fact. It’s just the way I communicate.

In that sense, I am a writer.

But …. I can’t spin a tale. I suck at lying (or, as my grandmother so aptly called it, “telling stories”). I don’t spend free moments in coffee shops on my laptop banging out a new essay; I don’t stay up into the wee hours drinking red wine and nudging words around in a poem. (Usually my red-wine drinking is accompanied by for more sensible and lucrative activities like eating cheese or watching movies or ogling Facebook. And, sigh, I haven’t met a wee hour in a long, long time). I don’t have the curiosity of a journalist, nor the ability to reach through the veil of reality like the masters of fiction who so awe me.

Defined

So that’s me. I do words; I don’t do stories. I can write; I don’t particularly like to. Hence my word-lovin’ brain came up with the snappy line I’ve been using to identify myself with an air of smug self-awareness: “Writing is my gift, but not my passion.”  

There. Phew! I’m defined. Box constructed; explanation crafted. Is it dinnertime yet?

Sitting comfortably on my little cushion of “This is who I am,” I have done my absolute best to ignore or disregard the question that often comes on the heels of my wise and well-crafted proclamation of self-understanding:

So what is your passion?

Ah.

I raise an eyebrow and one corner of my mouth in response to the pesky and frequent inquiry. I “hmph” in a way that says, “oh, wouldn’t you like to know.” I hint at what “it” is – this profound meaning and purpose that is other than writing ­– using phrases like “oh, it has something to do with …” and “it’s hard to explain, but …”

I believed all that myself, too, until I didn’t. Until I realized that, beyond these glimmers at which I coyly hint, I actually have no fucking clue about my passion, my purpose. Not really.

And I’m not fooling anyone.

The thing is, something is calling me. It’s been calling me for months and months. It’s been beckoning me into a big wide unknown. I hear a faint, muffled cry from somewhere REALLY AMAZING. But I haven’t been able to make out the message. It’s like there’s a leech-filled, snake-infested, mucky swamp between here and Whatever That Is. I’ve been convincing myself that I’m too busy, too needed, too encumbered to find a way through.  I haven’t felt this stuck, suffocated, and lost for a long time.

Interestingly, I also haven’t written. In a long, long time.

Using what I got

So here I am, knee-deep in this realization and the knowledge that keeping myself “defined” in such a small way is getting me nowhere, when I suddenly understood that there’s something I can do. I can use what I got to get whatever I don’t got (thank you, Salt ‘n’ Pepa. You're welcome, everyone from my generation who now has that song lodged in her or his head for the rest of the day). I’ve decided that I would use the thing I DO know to help me uncover the thing that I don’t.

What I know is that I can write. I may think it’s a drag, I may have a million reasons why it’s not a good use of my time – after all, I should be out pursuing my passion! By doing something utterly new! And foreign! And too scary to pursue! So maybe I’ll just watch another Sex & the City episode! Who wants ice cream? And on the cycle goes.

So. Starting today I’m making a commitment to myself to write every day. Here. With you all as my witnesses. For just a little while every day, I’m taking off my wide-brimmed editor sombrero and putting on my writer propeller-beanie. I am utterly grateful (and not at all surprised) that this is the moment in history when the Universe chose to send us an angel who will actually be wearing the sombrero full time before long. (I thank you in advance, my sweet friend, for donning it for a few hours a day while I rock the beanie.)

I know this much

I don’t know what it will do or where it will lead. But I DO know that an insight unexpressed will eventually run itself ragged in one’s head and then lie down for a long winter's nap. I do know that if I’d written about the blurred shadows of tree branches on the summer-sun-dappled hiking trail today, a moment of pause could have exploded into an eternity of now-ness.  

I know that even if I write what I believe to be nonsensical drivel, you all will love and embrace and accept me, as you have in my silence, and as you have right along. I know that if a day goes by that I don’t post, someone will call me on it. I know that navigating the swamp will be lots easier with all of you cheering me on from the banks, and wading in to pick me up when I invariably face plant.

I know that gifts aren’t called gifts for nothing. I’m eager to see where mine leads.

What are your gifts? Do you recognize them as such? How might your strengths pave the way to desire?

‘Til tomorrow (and the next day and the next),

Joy