I am writer, hear me roar!

I think, at this point, that I consider myself a writer. It’s funny because it was my envisioned career all the way back in the 5th grade when I started writing stories just for fun about a family of mice. In my early teen years I went to a 3 week writing camp for 3 summers in a row, developing my skills and producing some fairly good work. Then at about 16, as school and age were drying up my creative juices, I did a “career project” on freelance writing. I realized writing was work. I realized I didn’t really want to sit at a desk all day and force myself to produce something other people would want to read, something editors would want to publish. Besides, I had discovered missionary work and was impassioned with a call to go and help others find spiritual nourishment. But I also acknowledged that by going out to fulfill my call I would find something worth writing about. It’s strange how no matter how much I grow and change, in the end I’ll still be the same girl who wrote mouse stories in the 5th grade.

Another aspect of my writer-esque-ness is that I find I HAVE to write. It’s not really optional. I mean, I could choose not to, but then all the ideas and words running around my head would go to waste. I enjoy getting them out on paper. Plus, I’m not gifted in painting or acting or sculpting or dancing, so I’m happy to have this way to creatively express myself.

So I would consider myself a writer. Not in the professional sense of the word but in the vocational sense. It’s a part of who I am and what I do. I think that’s one reason why I so love my Blog. Even if I’m only writing a few paragraphs, “publishing” them myself, and boasting a readership of 10, I’m still writing and being read!

I’m finding fall to be a particularly inspiring season. My life is so rich right now anyway that there’s no lack of things to say. Below you will find a couple of poems that I wrote this afternoon. Something inside simply stirred me to bundle up in my coat and scarf, take my coffee carafe and a pad of paper, head to my favorite bench overlooking a vineyard and the lake, and let my pen say what it would. Hope you like it.