Writing Desk

Sitting at my new writing desk, I write these first lines from what I’ve been calling home from a distance for the past few months. If you’re reading this, you know me well enough to also know about the nightmare I’ve gone through to get here. That is a story for later, though. The best way to spend a 7-hour layover in Paris before my home-bound flight was to begin documenting every step. You see, only the few that know all the details will know that it matters that it’s written somewhere.

For now, a few thoughts I’ve been waiting to put down.

When I decided (yet, again) to be serious about blogging in the fall of 2019, I said that I wouldn’t try to find a format to follow. Formats and templates can box me in quickly, and after many years of self-indulging writing drama, I’ve learned that defining my writing spaces is the biggest and scariest of all monsters. So, I started writing about what I knew, which was teaching, for the most part.

Every once in a while, I’d write a few lines that played with the idea of being narratives, but those I kept private, somewhere in an “Untitled” document in one of my drives. More recently, I stopped fighting the urge for storytelling and took Kyle Purpura’s advice to use narrative to share what I know. That’s when the blog went from being called “Rants…” to “Start with a Story” I was happy, yet, I felt like the “format idea” I had put to bed earlier was quietly making its way to this space. I didn’t pay much attention to it because I was writing, I was inspired, I was producing (not much sharing) content almost every week.

Fast-forward to 2020 and the “Stuck in Cairo” period. During this time, I didn’t stop writing; in fact, I started writing almost daily thanks to some dear friends who inspired me to journal. Now, journaling has always been easier because it’s just sitting down in front of the screen and typing current events and feelings. That makes it very, very raw and messy, not something that “fits” the blog. However, I knew that from those entries, I could eventually pull out something interesting. The thing is, this was during a time in my life when uncertainty ruled. I was staying at a friend’s house while my husband worked to put together our new home in Miami, I went back to work for a place that made it incredibly hard to say goodbye to, and while I’ll never have enough words to thank them, it felt like I was trapped unable to move on. Try being creative while feeling like that.

Thankfully, journaling saved me on more than one occasion. It gave me an outlet and a sense of routine. I’d wake up early, write a few lines and then go to work. Journaling also messed me up a bit because, sure, I was writing more, but I wasn’t writing for the blog I so weirdly love. I tried to invoke Liz Gilbert’s wisdom and just ignore such thoughts and just keep writing. I was successful, only a few times. Other times, the urge for control won. I did not write a single line on those days, not a raw and messy line to keep private, nor something worth posting. Sad and silly, indeed.

Eventually, I went through one of those upside-down creative moments when I just start something new because the push from within is too much too loud. I gave fictional writing another chance and created a new blog just for those stories. This allowed some of my older writing to come out to light. I wrote/reshaped for an entire week and posted a few stories. It felt new, different, incredible. Before this, each time I tried writing fiction, I felt like an impostor. What changed? I have no idea but it was good.

I started that new blog because I wanted to write and share those stories, and fiction writing is something that I want to keep away from this blog. As much as I have fought the idea of a format, I know that I want this space to remain as real as possible. Those fiction stories that were unexpectedly coming up deserved a place where they could be genuinely appreciated, without the always-hunting-shame-machine making them feel smaller.

Now that I have a space to grow ideas from pieces I thought would always remain private and another space to blog about teaching, I encounter another silly dilemma. When I started writing the “Stuck in Cairo” story, I thought, “Where would I post these entries?” and, “What about the other posts I’ve started about simply life? Where do those go?” UGH! “Do I need to pay a community manager to help me figure this out?”

I do not want to have multiple blogs and random links to host my writing. I want one place. 

Right now, and after exploring WordPress long enough to taste frustration, I don’t know the answer to those questions. What I do know is that I feel a lot of writing coming out of me, like, a bunch. And I don’t want just to keep creating “Untitled 927646” documents. I guess I’ll figure something out, and in the meantime, I’ll just save my words there because they’re like kittens wanting to leave the playpen.

To end this entry, some gratitude mostly because it just came up and I’m trying really hard not to assume that it’s my awkward way to end this post. I’ve said it before, I suck at writing endings.

Thanks for being here and reading these lines. I can’t explain why I choose to share my writing with the world; I just know that writing that makes it here does something different to me from the writing I just keep in hiding. You give my words purpose.