10 Years of Writing

It dawned on me the other night that I’ve been “writing” for 10 years now. I started my first blog, 12 Months of Lent, in 2009, and here we are now, halfway through 2019, a whole decade later.

Wow.

While I’ve been an avid journaler since childhood (I have a giant Rubbermaid filled to the brim with old journals in my basement, you too?), that and writing papers for school was about as far as writing went for me. Other interests always seemed to take precedence, and if I’m being honest, writing never really felt like an “interest” to me. It was just something I did—or had to do.

English was always one of my better subjects though, and I was often complimented on my writing—with one college professor even asking me once (in front of the entire class 😳) if I had actually written the paper I turned in to him. “Of course I did,” I answered, somewhat bewildered, “Why do you ask?” “It’s just quite good,” he said with a nod of approval.

Thanks? I guess?

But then, without giving it much thought, I decided to start a blog in 2009. While the blogging heyday seems to be behind us now, it was very much A Thing 10 years ago. When I casually mentioned to a new friend of mine that I was embarking on a year-long endeavor to complete a different personal challenge each month, he replied with: “Blog. Blog. Blog.”

Oh, I hadn’t even thought of that. Ok…

So, I did. I blogged. And even though I was religiously writing 3-5 times a week, I somehow still didn’t think of it as “writing.” It was just how I documented what I was doing.

I ended up keeping that same blog for 6 years though, and over the hundreds of posts that I crafted, whether I intended it to happen or not, I started to become a writer—or more likely, the writer I had always been began to emerge.

Now…I have to say, I still feel very uncomfortable calling myself a writer. Hence why I put “writing” in quotations a number of times in this post. But honestly, in order to call yourself a writer…all you really need to do is write. It doesn’t have to be professionally for an esteemed organization. You don’t need an impressive list of credentials and qualifications. You don’t need an official degree from a university. You just have to write. That’s it.

And I do. I write a lot actually.

I remember when I first graduated from design school how I could barely muster up the courage to call myself a “Graphic Designer” out loud. Even though I had studied intensively for 4 years. Even though I had an entire portfolio of work. Even though I held a BFA in the subject from a well-respected school. It just felt…awkward. And like I somehow hadn’t earned it.

But we all start somewhere, right? And I eventually got used to it, just as I’m slowly getting used to being called a writer.

It’s interesting too, because when I first retired 12 Months of Lent, I was excited for the break, but as the blog-less weeks went on, something unexpected happened. While it felt like a relief to let completing the monthly personal challenges go, I found that what I did actually miss was the writing itself. I hadn’t realized until then how much I’d grown to enjoy it. How it had become an outlet for me. A way to document and process. A form of self-expression.

It became clear to me too that writing came a lot easier to me than design ever did (it took me a very long time to admit this to myself). While I’m a designer by trade, I think I’m a communicator by nature. I loved my Information Architecture courses in college and learning how to organize information in the clearest and most concise way possible. I had always enjoyed the challenge of using words to craft stories more than visuals. It just felt natural to me, whereas design often didn’t.

Somewhere along the line, my career path followed suit too, and I actually write for a living now. Not as a novelist or a journalist or any other traditional form, but I manage the marketing and communications for the company I work for. I write social media posts, blog posts, press releases, magazine articles, marketing copy and more, and while it isn’t what I would have imaged a “writer” doing when I was a kid, it is indeed writing.

And I write here too, of course. And in my journal. Truth be told, the idea for this post came to me while I was journaling one night, as a lot of my creative ideas do.

So…am I a writer? Of course I am. Or at least I’m becoming one.

Thank you for reading all this time.

Cheers to 10 Years. 🥂