WRITING QUOTE - April 1, 2015

"Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged."

- J. K. Rowling - 

At one point in my life, I had a plethora of "hobbies." I had been trying new things, trying to live outside the box I had placed myself in, and I found a lot of things I liked doing. But with all things, time is a requirement, and after awhile time becomes nonexistent when taken up with a bunch of activities. 

One of my main activities was writing, but, because of my own doubt, I would compromise my writing time with other activities, ones that I received instant gratification from doing, because I could finish them or they could be done "perfectly." 

Writing is not ever really done and the perfection of it is more from the perspective of who's reading it than not, which created a dilemma within myself. Writing required me to preserver whether I had doubt or not, which, at that time in my life, I wasn't willing or able to do.

Time passed, and I decided to assess my activities to determine which ones were needed and which ones weren't. Of course, writing perched at the top of the list, and I was finally in a position internally to honor it. I let go of a lot of other things and focused on my writing, because it truly was the one area of my life that was complete in its fulfillment, and that fulfillment was not dependent on whether my writing was read or enjoyed by others, only by me.

As I've found with most anything that holds true worth and value in my life, there is never any absolute, all-the-time easiness of doing it. I have to continually trudge forward with the endeavor, whether I feel at ease with it or not. 

Now, will I secure an outcome like J. K. Rowling, who knows, but the outcome is no longer the most important thing--the doing of it is.