I am NOT on a Mission from God

All my life, I have fought being a writer. I have often wished I could be happy as a with nine to five job that I do day in and day out with a good salary, a pension plan, house in the suburbs instead of the bush and 2.5 children. If that were the case, I would certainly have more money than I do now (especially if I put the children to work). But whenever I’ve tried this, I’ve become stressed and miserable.

I have to write. When I don’t, I get depressed and disconnected and the meaning falls out of my life. I am one of those fortunate people who has discovered fairly early in life what it is I am here to do, although it has taken me a lifetime to fully embrace that knowledge (and it takes only a moment to lose it).

If I had trusted in the beginning, it would have been much easier.

So it goes. Trust has never been a strong suit of mine (my strong suit has always been clubs).

I know don’t who or what decided that I had to be a writer. For a time I entertained the notion that I was on a Mission from God. I would get up in the morning and try to put myself into a trance, hoping to the get the connection and that the exact words that I was chosen to give the world would flow through me like mercury. I imagined publishing best-sellers that would impact the lives of millions and filling stadiums with my fans. When the words didn’t flow, as sometimes they don’t, I would fall into a morass of fear and self-pity because here I was FAILING in my Mission from God.

Being on a Mission from God was too stressful (and there weren’t enough parties). So I gave it up.

Now I just try to accept the simpler truth: I have to write. For whatever reason (it could be a brain malfunction for all I know), I have to write in order to be at peace.

And if I am made to write, there must be somebody who needs to read what I’ve written. Whether that is one person, a hundred, a thousand or a million, I don’t know. (I haven’t entirely given up on the millions . . . and the stadiums and . . . oh dear. . . shut up. I really don’t know where THAT came from.)

All I ask is that I write the best I can and that I find the way, through traditional publishing or otherwise, to reach whomever is intended to read what I have written. (And that I get a best-seller, and have a book tour during which I will be slim and younger and well-dressed and rich and. . . hey, that’s not true. I’m not really like this. Honest!)