Showing up

I’ve been struggling. A lot.

Writing an essay is the last thing I’ve wanted to do for the last two weeks, but especially this week. I have so much going on in my head and life at the moment that I just haven’t felt like writing.

But I have to. This is my job now.

I’ve already come so far with this publication that missing a week or two because my life is a shitshow behind the scenes has just felt wrong. So I’ve kept showing up.

I could talk about a lot of things, but most of them don’t belong on the internet. At least not yet. They might one day. But right now, most of it is best left in real life.

So while I’m not exactly experiencing writer’s block, I am in a way.

The problem isn’t that I don’t have anything to say. It’s almost the opposite. There are too many thoughts competing for attention, too many conversations I can’t have publicly, too many half-written essays sitting in my head waiting for a day when they’re ready to exist.

There are so many essays I want to work on, but these last two weeks I’ve been working against a lot of forces that are out of my control, and the fact that I’m still making sure I’m publishing feels like a win.

The strange thing about turning writing into a job is that inspiration stops being a requirement. You don’t get to wait until everything feels calm or until life gets out of the way. If you want to build something, you have to keep turning up, even when your brain would rather be somewhere else.

This week has been one of those weeks.

That’s not unique to writing. It’s true of almost any meaningful work.

Some weeks, you’ll produce something you’re incredibly proud of. Other weeks, you’ll simply keep the promise you made to yourself to show up.

I’m beginning to think both are equally important.

I used to think the hard part of writing was finding something to say. It turns out the harder part is deciding what not to say. Every week, I make hundreds of tiny decisions about what belongs in an essay and what belongs in my life.

This week, those decisions left me with this piece.

It isn’t the one I planned to write. But it is an honest one.

And for this week, that’s enough.