When I entered elementary school, my mother gave me a keepsake book entitled ‘School Years.’ On the inside there were pockets for each of my class photos and lines where I could write in my ‘new friends,’ ‘activities,’ ‘achievements,’ ‘awards,’ and boxes to check off ‘When I grow up I want to be–.’ Girls had the following choices: mother, nurse, school teacher, airline hostess, model, and secretary. There was also one box where you could write in the career of your choice.
Mother, nurse and school teacher were my top contenders until I reached the third grade. At that point, ‘school teacher’ dropped out of the race and I entered “movie star” the write in line. I still laugh when I read that. I did love to play dress up but I’m not sure how I thought that talent might translate to the silver screen.
By fifth grade something shifted and nurse was dropped, school teacher returned and a new career option replaced movie star. Writer.
I have always loved to write. I remember making up little stories in my head as far back as pre-school. As I got older occasionally I even imagined that, one day, I might write a book.
Recently I found a diary that I kept for three months. Inside the bright green cover, the stories and musings from my ‘One Year Diary’ place me at 13-years-old and in the seventh grade. I wrote faithfully and in great detail from January 1st through March 13th. And then I stopped.
I didn’t write with regularity again, at least about my inner-most thoughts, until I was twenty and enrolled in a study-abroad semester in Amsterdam. Throughout my overseas stint and subsequent summer spent traveling around Europe, I wrote in a journal about my travels and my feelings about what I saw and experienced.
Flipping through the pages of my two diaries is a lovely window into my life and my mind during those years. I’ve always been envious of friends who journal religiously and have a record of their life to keep or, if they choose, to share. Until I started blogging, I never managed to stick with it for more than a few months.
These days, when people ask me “what I do,” I pause. I left my work in the field of training and development when Big Papa and I launched our adoption adventure. While I occasionally pick up part time work as an editor, I wouldn’t identify that as my career per se. Sometimes I’ll respond, “I write” or “I blog,” but I’ve found myself challenged to take it to the next step and say, “I’m a writer.” Yet write I do, and frequently at that.
Over the years I’ve spoken to a number of writers who struggle with identifying themselves as such. Most have said that it wasn’t until they saw their name in print, on the page and in a public venue where people could purchase their work in a magazine or a book that they allowed themselves to say, “I’m a writer” and believe it to be true.
I’ve often wondered: would I feel more “authentic” if one of my articles was published in a magazine? Or, what if I managed to write and publish a memoir? Would a paycheck or a publisher’s contract change my mental perception of “who I am?”
This morning I looked deeply at my reflection in the mirror. There are so many facets to Beth: wife, friend, gardener, photographer, creative home-chef, and adoptive mom-to-be. I don’t have to look too far inside myself to see that – though I might like it – I don’t need the external validation of my writer self to know that I am a writer. Though years may have slipped by where I didn’t write much or launch what I wrote into the world, it doesn’t matter. You simply can’t take the writer out of the girl.