Day 1 - My Journey

 

Slice of Life Challenge - Day 1

My Journey

I'm so thankful for my journey.  My writing journey started long ago when I used to write in notebooks and hide them away.  Those words and notebooks are long since gone and forgotten but I still remember writing letters and poems and stories and the feeling of freedom that waited for me on each new, blank page.  I had no idea what I was doing then, but now I know I was trying to find meaning in my everyday life.  I was writing to understand life.  I was writing to create, to see my thoughts spread out in front of me, even when I didn't know what those thoughts were yet.

There are long stretches in my life when I didn't write a bit.  Not a word or sentence for any purpose beyond school assignments.  But even then, I was filling my writing tank.  I was tucking away little pieces of memories.  I was unconsciously gathering gems for later use.

As an adult, I didn't think of myself as a writer at all.  Deep down I wanted to be but I didn't feel like I had anything to say and even if I did, who would want to read it anyway?  That all changed when I had the opportunity to work with Geri, who I now think of as my writing guru.  She's my friend, my mentor and my first real encourager of writing.  She planted a seed (or two or three hundred) and it slowly began to grow within me.  She said that a teacher of writing should be a writer herself.  A teacher can not fully appreciate what she is asking of her students unless she is taking part in the act of writing herself.  I knew this must be true and I wanted to become this teacher who writes but it took me a while to mess around in private before I finally worked up the courage to think beyond my notebook.  It wasn't until a friend introduced me to the idea of joining the Slice of Life Challenge that I began to think of myself as someone who could write and be involved in a community of writers.

I joined the challenge for the first time in 2012 and felt relatively safe in doing so because I didn't figure anyone would read my blog anyway.  I was wrong and I am so glad I was!  I met some of the sweetest ladies, the most caring people began to stop by to leave some comment love.  This early encouragement did an amazing job of feeding my writing soul and I've been so lucky to meet some of these same wonderful people in real life in the last couple of years.  I never would have guessed where this blogging journey would take me.

Now as I look March in the eye again I am so excited to know that I might be able to share some bits of encouragement to feed someone else's writing soul.  I can't wait to see all the new bloggers take wing and settle into this year's challenge.  I also can't wait to see old friends and hear 31 new stories of their lives.  

I chose STORY as my OLW this year.  I am ready to share mine!  I'm ready to read yours.