These Boots Are Made For Walkin'

Something that I hear a lot is a variation on "I love how you said that." There have been times when that has annoyed me. Times when I felt like the person I really wanted to reach wasn't listening, or like the complimented line had drifted into someone's ears while they were skimming stations and had arrived without any of the other things I was trying to say. I talked less. I wrote less. But it still came up.

Thirteen years ago a clear and obvious direction laid in front of me, a path that had been set up for me my entire life. And I didn't take it. I stepped off onto a sideroad, convinced that the obvious route was some sort of trap. Because I poured everything I had into that new route (including a sizable amount of trust in a Divine desire for my good), within three years I had done the impossible. I went from the bottom of the industry, to what I considered the top (even if the top was a temporary position. I had a desk and I did the job, it counts). Then I promptly wandered into a blackberry bramble, which I've been floundering through ever since.

As I've pushed through and been scratched (and eaten blackberries, it wasn't all bad) I wondered what had happened to my lovely trail that I was on. After ten years, I finally emerged - right next to that nicely paved road I initially abandoned. I'm not going to try to force a parable about the benefits of spending ten years getting pricked and poked instead of walking along more (or less - life is imperfect, after all) smoothly.

But I am going to share something I've learned from it that I can apply to the future, and it is this: If I have already done the impossible once, then surely I can do it again.

I mentally reviewed that meteoric three year journey, and distilled the process into six words. Focus. Study. Practice. Humility. Curiosity. Hope. The road was still there, waiting to be found, so I'm back on it, clinging to those practices. I have a new pair of boots (something that I, unconsciously, have always used to mark new directions) and I'm pouring all of my energy into the road I'm on. Regardless of where this leads, just being here is a declaration of its own sort, long overdue:

I am a writer.

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