There once was a girl who loved to write.
That’s me. Joy. Welcome.
I have loved to write ever since I was young, but somewhere between post-college graduation blues and oh-man-this-is-adulthood, I started believing the lie that grown ups don’t write for fun.
Today, that changes.
Today I remember that I’ve always been a writer; it just slipped away for a bit. Let's take a moment and remember together.
Age 6: I fill the pages of my first diary, shamelessly using phrases such as “Dear Diary” and “See you again tomorrow,” and then hide the tiny key under a ceramic Beauty and the Beast figurine on my highest shelf.
Age 7: I co-author my first novel entitled Tom and Amy’s Birthday Party, a riveting page-turner of two best friends thrown into the ultimate test of loyalty when they discover they’ve planned their birthday parties on the same day. Venues have been booked. Invitations have been mailed. Classmates are taking sides, and no one is backing down.Will Tom and Amy’s friendship survive? (I can’t make this stuff up. Unfortunately, we gave the only copy to our second grade teacher as an end-of-year gift. After all, she had laminated the cover for us.)
Age 11: My fifth grade teacher gives me the Most Likely to Win the Pulitzer Prize award. This is most certainly the result of the brazen letter I voluntarily write to our state governor pushing to expand recycling programs in school cafeterias. Wow. Such gumption.
Age 15: I take my first journalism class, which propels me into a career as a reporter for the high school newspaper. (You may recall my column titled Joybells Tells.)
Age 18: I enter college with intentions of pursuing a degree in journalism, but change majors after watching an episode of Oprah dedicated to teachers. I sit on my couch crying, no, weeping, no, sobbing uncontrollably as Oprah highlights teachers who changed the lives of their students. Should I be embarrassed right now? After the show I call my mom to tell her I am switching majors, to which she responds, “Yeah, I knew this was coming. You’re meant to be a teacher.”
Age 22: I stand in front of my first class of fourth graders, counting down the minutes until our first writing workshop together. With a giddy smile, I release them to open new notebooks and write anything they want. They stare at me, then at their blank pages and back at me. “What are we supposed to write about?” one boy asks. “Anything you want!” 30 minutes later and there are still just blank pages. Wait. I have to actually teach these children to write?
Age 25: Official adulthood settles in and takes its toll. Teaching is overwhelming, my beloved writing workshop continues to be a major flop, and I’m too tired at night to do anything but watch all ten seasons of Friends. True story.
Age 28: I discover blogs and spend an ungodly amount of time scrolling through the writings of strangers whom I soon begin referring to as friends. I consider starting my own blog.
Age 28 plus a few months: I talk myself out of the blog.
Age 29: I consider starting my own blog.
Age 29 plus a few months: I talk myself out of the blog.
You get the idea. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Age 30 Something: Another literacy coach tells me I need a space to write and to stop making excuses and start a blog already. She warns me that hardest part is coming up with the name. She is right. Poor Stephen is trapped in a 5-hour brainstorming session of potential blog names during our road trip to Pennsylvania.
And this brings me to today.
There will always be a world out there pulling me away from writing. There will be lunches to pack and a snooze button screaming to be hit one more time. But I need to start writing again, and I hope you will consider doing the same.
Thanks for stopping by. Let’s do this.
