Instead of Muzak, we play Fugazi.

A quote popped up this week on the daily calendar I bought last year for my work desk from Five Below that really struck me. It said, “I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.”

It might be the only thing I’ve read by Pearl S. Buck, but it was affirming and motivating at the right time. I had recently opened a journal in which I’d made one entry at the beginning of the year during my annual winter lull that described the emptiness I’d been feeling, along with the stress of examining past mistakes that contributed to current uncertainties that could hold back the future I’d always dreamed for myself. I was reading this four months after that panic session was immortalized, and I felt so separate. Not that I was surprised at what I’d been enduring at that time (who am I kidding; I feel that way most of the time as someone never quite satisfied), but it had been a long time since I’d written anything other than a quick verse of a song on the fly, before and after that journal entry. I graduated from Greenville College (now it’s Greenville University; I’ll have to get used to that) in 2016, and that spring was the last time anyone I had written anything down that was a story or report. I’ve always loved writing (I decided to go for my B.A. in Journalism & Creative Writing to complement my B.S. in Music Business), but I’ve always needed to be assigned to break out of my creative shell to pen anything more committal than 3 verses, a bridge, and chorus. And I call myself a creative; just typing that makes me sad.

I’m reading these 3 pages where I’d just laid everything bare and given in to the flowing descent of what I’d been feeling, and I felt simultaneously ashamed that I’d not been using my talents and empowered to take action in pursuing my craft. I make so many excuses in embracing procrastination and laziness, and I end up in the same unhappy location, waiting for something to happen.

But like Pearl said, we can’t wait. It must be done, so we do.

For a writer, I recognize the act of writing should be necessity in the same way as food, water, and rest. It’s a calling, something jailed inside us that longs for escape and we’re the only one with a key. I’ve failed myself in that for so many years in favor of shopping sprees I couldn’t afford, Netflix binge sessions, love-hating social media that may or may not have contributed to hidden emotional instability. I’m choosing to use my time more wisely, at least what little I have left after throwing myself completely into the salaried job I love and exhaust myself over. I’m choosing to get back to doing something I love, for me. Part of that choice is this blog, a place where I can publicly be my awkward, over-thinking, likely annoying, and (I think) funny self. If you’re reading this, you’ve been warned. Thanks for waiting with me.

 

chelseainwaiting