Not too long ago, I was having a conversation with my grandparents over dinner. They were in town for a wedding and had offered to take me out to eat as a change of pace from my menu of peanut butter sandwiches and Ramen. We were just being served our individual pizzas when my grandfather turned the conversation to the subject of writing.
“Are you still writing, Lizzie? You know, your major and your internship and all that.”
I had worked for a local magazine near school for a year as the editorial assistant and part-time contributor of feature pieces. Writing had always come fairly easily to me, thus the major, but having my own work published for all to see had been a large and uncomfortable step for me. It was one thing to have my professors in college read my work for the purpose of a grade, but as a general rule I do not particularly care for others to read my work. In fact I had been very vocal about this detail, to the point that it was a well known fact among my friends, professors, and family members. Or so I thought.
“You should go back to writing for magazines, or see if you can get something published. You took a fiction class in school didn’t you?”
Because clearly taking a fiction class is all it takes to make your way onto a shelf at Barns and Noble. A fiction class, I might add, that I never took in the first place.
“No, Pop-Pop, I didn’t study fictional writing. My focus was on news briefs and speech writing. And I don’t like sharing my work when I don’t have to. I don’t like attention, never have.”
My grandfather was genuinely confused by this. After all the years my refusing to let people so much as read an essay of mine, I couldn’t imagine how this was news.
“But you like to write” he said. It makes you happy, and you’re good at it.”
He had a point. I do like to write, and while “good” is always in the eye of the beholder, I miss it now that I am working more with numbers and graphs. It was like going from 60 to 0 in the month between graduation and my first week of work, and NOT cranking out 3-6 essay a week felt off to me. Like I was being lazy. Cue the internal wake-up call.
It has been about a month or so since this conversation and after mulling it over, I have decided to work on breaking down my own walls a bit. There are millions of blogs floating around on the Internet and in the grand scheme of things mine would be a tiny dot in the picture. But at least this way I now have a reason to continue writing when I can, regardless of the level of interest in the piece, and I will be forcing myself to allow others access to my own thoughts and ponderings. And a year and a half out of school, there is no shortage of either.
So, to those reading this: A) thanks for being my guinea pigs and welcome to a world of semi-organized chaos. And B) you obviously have too much time on your hands and should probably go find another hobby.
