The Art of Writing

Some gifts don't leave even when you abandon them

Photo by Angelina Litvin on Unsplash

How did things get so busy?

At some point in my life I became a busy person. I’m always on the go, doing things, working, building, cleaning, showing up. It’s exhausting. Inevitably, when these moments strike, I elect to sacrifice the things that matter most to me.

Like my writing.

I’m up way before dawn, cramming down breakfast and giving up any chance at exercise so that I can drive to work in the traffic and unending rain, I’m teaching classes all day long (and no, I am not a teacher), I’m behind in answering emails, I’ve barely seen my wife and kids for weeks now, and whenever I have a free moment I close my eyes and fall asleep on the couch.

And the one thing I let go of to make space is this, this thing that’s usually my salvation.

I started writing in the second grade. Mrs. Rocky, an all-around excellent second grade teacher, saw something in me – some creative spark that she chose to foster. Instead of following along with the lesson plan, she allowed me to write stories. Pages poured out of my tiny hands, my fingers cramped around a wooden pencil, quotation marks and punctuation in all the wrong places. There were stories inside of me, and Mrs. Rocky knew how important it was to give those stories space to grow and thrive.

The teenage years pushed my writing into a hidden place, somewhere dark and secret where I could safely pour my heart out onto the page, a place where no other eyes would be allowed to go. I wish I had some of the writing from those years so that I could understand what I was thinking and feeling in those moments.

By the end of high school I knew that I needed to write in my professional life, but I was torn. I’d grown up in poverty, after all, and the true mark of success from that type of upbringing is to make money, to be financially stable, to work and provide and not suffer like my parents had done. The result of that thinking is another story for another day, but the bottom line is that I set the pencil down. I walked away from this thing that I love so much.

It almost killed me.

Much later, once life had settled down and I was “a real adult,” I discovered that I could write in the margins of my life. It stayed secret, much like it had when I was a teen, but there were opportunities around me to let that gift out of its cage. I started to write more. I started to create. I started living in those pages.

Somehow, miraculously, I found a balance between this need to write and the companion need to keep my life moving forward with all of its obligations. And yet, when things get crazy busy like they are now, this is the one place I allow to gather dust. I set it aside.

Do you let go of the art you create when you’re too busy?

And is art really just this surplus thing in our lives? Or is it more?

It’s not that I *should* write. I know better than that. I *want* to write. Writing is the cure for me. Writing helps me breathe, it lets me see myself clearly, it shows me the beauty inside of the complexity of things I need to face. And, unlike anything else that I can think of, if I let this talent slump in the corner for a few weeks or months or years, I know that I can always come back to it.

My writing will never abandon me.

If you feel like you’re stuck in a cycle of things you *need* to get done and that you don’t have time for the things you *want* to be doing instead, especially if its writing or creating or building or connecting, don’t lose sight of why you’re feeling that way. That art is the real you.

This art is the real me.

Your trans friend,

Robin

PS – I literally had to sit in my car in the employee parking lot with my laptop tucked up against the steering wheel of my car to write this today. Because it is important after all.