The Thing About Getting Started (Again)

 Don’t get me wrong, the title of this article might confuse you, I started writing when I was five years old, and no, not the holding-a-crayon-and-scribbling-on-a-notepad-writing, but actual writing writing. My mum was in the hospital giving birth to my baby brother at the time, so I wonder if that pushed me into writing about all the things going on in my head (because both parents were too busy with more pressing matters than listening to my incessant stories), but I recall- clear as crystal- taking a few blank sheets of paper, stapling them together, and writing a poem about stars (eponymously titled Stars). But no, that didn’t feel like enough, for I wanted the Stapled Sheets to seem like a proper book. So, in my little girl handwriting, I sharpened my pencil and really got down to it. I wrote this really cool fairytale about a princess that had been cursed into a rose bush by her evil stepmother; she would only regain her human form when a handsome and kind prince plucked a rose from that very bush one day. Of course such a prince eventually appears, plucks the rose and sets her free from the wretched curse, but I didn’t feel the need to write the cliche- they didn’t get married immediately, she merely smiled at him, thanked him with all her heart, and they walked into the sunset together as they talked and talked and talked. The end. And for good measure, on the last page I drew a diamond to make it look grand.

I look back at that book with such pride- my magnum opus, at the ripe old age of five! Not many of us get to stake such claims. Since then, the written word and language in general has been my saving grace, my poison of choice, my refuge when I am lost and confused. No, I am not a writer by profession. Not yet anyway, because I’m certain that I’ll get there at my signature glacial pace one day.

We each have our own skills, and if we’re lucky and self-aware enough, we recognise them before it’s too late. I have a few of my own too, and writing happens to be one of them. I just know that I can arrange whatever word vomit I might have spewing about in my mouth or mind into something coherent. I used to write here on my blog fairly regularly for years, and looking back at it and re-reading so many of these old works feels oddly gratifying. I like myself! I really really do, and not in a horrid narcissistic fashion but in a happy/humble manner that has become very rare in a world ridden by polarities and swinging from here to there like an exhausted pendulum. 

Maybe this will mark my return into the merry world of regular writing. 

Time will tell.