When I was younger, I always knew that I wanted to be a writer, that I wished to be in a creative sinkhole. It was like, that had been imprinted into the insides of my gypsy heart, irrevocably and forever my destiny.
But, as the world intervened, I was made to realize (falsely) that I will never make any money from being a writer, and I should find some other vocation. Some other vocation that paid better, much better, has more security, and more stability associated with it.
Ah, if only, I had been stronger in my mindset, and realized that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how much money I could have made from the writing thing, because it was something that my gypsy heart wanted to do.
For the next 20 years (I am 34 now), I worked on various odd and end jobs.
Marketing. Sales. Officiating. And so much more.
It was all for naught. There was no point to it. My heart kept on going back to creating and writing. It wanted to do that so badly.
No Matter What Role I Tried, I Failed Miserably
I forced myself over and over again to try new jobs. New roles. Responsibilities.
I thought that if I tried enough things, I would be able to find something, anything, that would resonate with me, and that I would be able to stick with for a long time to come.
Everything I tried felt like the odd fit. I didn’t feel right in any of these jobs. They paid well, and they allowed me to live a life of luxury, but oh man, oh man, I hated going to these jobs every day.
I surmised to myself, I must be lazy. I must be unmotivated. An unmotivated lazy oaf of sorts.
But that wasn’t the damn case. It wasn’t. It was that I was born and bred for something different.
When your heart has something else imprinted on it, then nothing else can come close. Nothing else compares.
Job after job, I started and left. I couldn’t fit in. Everyone else seemed happy and content with their lot in life and I felt like an idiot.
Why Couldn’t I Just Be Happy With What I Had?
I asked myself this question over and over again.
“What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just be happy with what I have?”
I mean, I was the luckiest person on this planet. Not only did I have these great jobs that paid well, had great bosses, and colleagues, they all loved me and wanted me to stay forever.
It was me – I was the problem. I couldn’t stay. They bored me.
I wasn’t content with any of them.
I wondered to myself, “Is it that I don’t like working?
But I cured myself of that notion quickly enough, when I realized, if I like something, I work so hard at it, that I forget to eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom.
I am a hard worker! I am. But I am not a hard worker if it isn’t aligned with my values and my heart.
I Went Travelling To Run Away From This Misery
That’s when I decided perhaps travel would be the answer. I loved to travel. It was so much fun to escape all of this misalignment for a while, and do something completely unrelated.
I thought that perhaps it was travel – travel was the answer to all of my troubles. If I found a way to travel forever, perhaps, I would be happy.
But that wasn’t it. I was traveling to run away from the existence of misaligned values. Because once I stopped running away, and sat down to write the novels that were inside of my head, and created all of that goodness that I wanted to create, I did not need to travel anymore.
I don’t need to travel anymore. There are so many people in my life right now who are obsessed with moving about, traveling, doing. I am content, so content to sit in my chair at home, and write my novels.
All I want to do all day long is write. If someone suggests to me to travel to one of the cafes in my area and work from there with them, I balk at the idea.
I don’t even like traveling away from my desk!!
That’s how much I have changed. And it’s all because I came back to writing.
Writing – It Was Always You – I Forgot
When traveling didn’t work as a sort of distraction, I started going after men and relationships. I thought they could make me happy. I would jump from relationship to relationship, hoping, wishing, praying that this would be the one.
He would be the one who would cure me of all of my misery and would help me to stick to one place and one vocation.
There were so many others who lived lives of stability and security. I could be one of those, couldn’t I? I wanted to be, so badly.
But that wasn’t to be. The men in my life came and left. They didn’t make me happy.
They made me realize more and more how miserable I was, and how I wanted to run away from it all.
Now, I write every single day. Whenever I feel lonely, fearful, or doubtful, I sit down at my uncomfortable chair in my apartment and write words.
Writing soothes me. It makes me feel comfortable. Being in my creative sinkhole makes me ecstatic.
Secure. Happy. Content.
I had forgotten over the 20 years of running away from writing, that it was always writing. Writing is what makes me happy.
That is what I had forgotten. That is what I had to remember again.
What Was I Running Away From??
The deal is this.
We are all running away from some part of ourselves
They are called our shadow selves. For me, specifically, it was writing.
It was that part of me that I had buried 20 years ago, who had wanted to be a writer. She didn’t care about money, accolades, fame, or fortune. She just wanted to write.
There were so many, so many hundreds of stories in her head. She just wanted the time and space to sit down and write them all down.
Even now, I sit down and I have hundreds of ideas in my head. I pick one and I play with it, and I write it down over a few months. I finish a novel and immediately thereafter, I start another one.
Because there are hundreds of stories in my head that need to get out. They need to get written.
I was running away from not writing. The more I ran away from it, and the more I didn’t write, the more miserable I became. I attributed that misery to relationships, politics, health, or parents.
But that wasn’t it! It was all the writing. I was running away from my destiny that had been set up in my heart ages ago.
I Have Already Wasted 20 Years Not in My Creative Sinkhole
I want to tell you this. We are all going to die.
Huh, yeah, that’s not a big surprise to you, is it? Nor to me.
But now when I think about this in terms of my writing, my heart cringes.
Oh god, I have already wasted 20 years of my life not writing. Hundreds of stories that could have come out were left unsaid.
They are all sitting there in a sludgy pool at the bottom of my heart. They will never be recovered.
But I have time now. I don’t know how much time.
Perhaps twenty more years. Perhaps more. Maybe less.
So I have a limited time left on this planet. I remind myself of this fact every single freaking day.
I want to remember that I have already wasted 20 years not writing. How much more time will I waste not writing?
I cannot afford to waste any more time not writing! It is an abomination if I waste any more time.
I cannot handle that shame. It is absurd to me that I know I am supposed to spend my time writing, and I spend more of my time not writing than ever.
Even Though I Write 1000s Of Words Every Day…
The truth is that I want to spend 24/7 writing. In my creative sinkhole.
But I need to sleep. Eat. Bathe. Call parents.
Work. Sing. Spend time with friends.
Sit and be still.
Out of the 24 hours that are in a day, I end up spending perhaps 4 of the writing. Only 4!!!
That is again another abomination (my new favorite word). But at least that’s better than 0 hours a day, which was where I was before.
Even if you spend ten minutes a day doing what you love, what your heart desires, that is more than enough. That is better, much better than zero hours a day, which is where the entirety of the human race sits at.
Every single person you speak to, almost every single person, wants to be doing something else with their life, with their time.
Time makes up life. How you spend your time, is how you spend your life.
Spend your time and your life doing what you want to do, even if a minuscule portion of it. It cannot be 24/7.
But it can be maybe 10 minutes. Maybe 4 hours. Maybe 1 day a month.
My Gypsy Heart Loves This Creative Sinkhole I Have Enveloped Myself In
I left Toronto because I needed more money to live there, so I would have to take away from my writing time to work more. I left almost all of my relationships, platonic, and not-so-platonic because they took away from my writing time.
The world that I live in now is geared towards my writing.
Towards my creativity.
I spend very little money on anything that doesn’t help my creative sinkhole. I create and write as much as possible.
Engineering my life this way, I can be a prolific writer because I choose to focus entirely on it.
This creative sinkhole that I have deliberately created for myself is my source of ecstasy. I love it here.
It helps me be in alignment again. I can spend hours and hours working now. I get up and my first thought is, “Yay! I get to work on my writing and creative projects today! I am so lucky!”
That is the truth for me. But it might not be possible for you. Do what you can with what you have.
All you need to do is ensure you work on what your heart desires for at least 10 minutes a day. That’s all. Start with that.
When I Don’t Create, Those Days Are Wasted
I am now a person who works 7 days a week. Weekends are a foreign concept in my land.
Who needs weekends when every day I am working on something I love to do? Weekends are a break that I don’t need because every day is a joyous and momentous occasion for me.
But sometimes, I am traveling. And sometimes I am sick.
Other times, things come up. Those days, those rare occasions when I end up not creating or writing anything, are wasted days to me.
They were wasted. Entirely damn wasted. Such a waste that my heart weeps at them.
Those are days that I will never get back.
There are so many stories in my head, so much writing, and creating inside of me that needs to happen. It has to happen. Right now. If it doesn’t, I feel sore, I feel out-of-sorts, I feel confused and discombobulated.
Why am I alive, if not to create and write? What is the point of living, if I cannot do those things?
My heart needs it. My soul and spirit desire it. Does yours?
What Kind Of Creative Sinkhole Can You Create For Yourself?
When people tell me they can’t possibly live the life they want, I ask them to minify their dream life. If there was only one thing that you could pick from your dream life and live it right now, what would it be?
For some, it is taking a glass-blowing class downtown every week. Or it might be writing a blog post every week. It could also be sitting down with a group of friends offline and making a big quilt.
I don’t know what makes your heart sing. But you do.
Even if you say you don’t, you do.
You might be running away from it, but you do.
So figure out how to bring that into your life right now as it is, without magnanimous changes. Dramatic changes don’t usually work.
But baby changes always seem to.
What can you do right now to bring that awesomeness into your life right now? Your heart desires it. It needs it with a passion and fervor that you never knew you had in you.
Are You in Your Creative Sinkhole Yet?
I used to hate myself. So lazy, and unmotivated. I would never amount to anything, I was told over and over again.
I couldn’t stick with anything long enough to be successful. So many admonitions from myself and others came towards me.
Now, they are non-existent. Everyone admires me (misplaced but there). They see how motivated, excited, and productive I am now.
It’s not because I am a different person. I am absolutely the same person as I was before.
But the things I am working on are the things I care about – truly care about. I am doing things I want to do with my time. That motivation comes from the inside out.
Everyone can sense it. But I can feel it when I complete project after project, writing, and others, and I feel that sense of accomplishment that comes from being truly me.
There is no misalignment anymore. I am in my creative sinkhole and that is what my heart truly desires. It is all good, my friends.
