And I wasn’t happy.

At first I attributed it to a lack of a yardstick. At that point, life was driving to some far away beach: every milestone another sign dictating how much closer I was to the destination. Once I was there though, at the edge of the ocean, the signs disappeared, each one now a buoy, separated by a stretch of space more vast than the one before it.

When I was younger, I wrote to escape from my life. Looking back, I can’t ignore the irony. As an adult, it’s still an escape for me: the pipe dream away from the rat race of my day-to-day life.

Yet I enjoy the challenge. The high risk, high reward of a goal. I don’t mind the slog getting there. I try to ignore the sleepless nights where I wonder if I what I’m doing is the best move for my near future: with a partner, with kids, or with my aging parents. I try to focus on the fleeting words spinning from my muse, the challenges I set for my characters, and the greater challenges I set for myself, as the writer. In a day-to-day life where everything is wonderfully mundane, I love to keep myself challenged: whether it’s a small thing, like the topic of this week’s blog, or a big thing: like how is my favorite character going to get out of the pit they dug for themselves.

But there’s always that hope I could one day escape my current life to pursue what I think is even better.

That day might not ever happen. I would love to think my work is redeemable, that it has some merit, that it would be loved by readers far and wide, but the outcome is only born out of both luck and hard work and I only have so many years to get it right. I can’t say exactly what keeps me from moving on from that deep, dark place, but I know I don’t have the time or energy to keep worrying about the possibilities.

I note the irony of writing this blog post. This bit in the endless void of the great interweb, where people will find infinitely more entertaining things and pass my words over for an adorable costumed dog chasing its tail for the umpteenth time. Where my thoughts and words, however heartfelt they are, will fall on deaf ears and blind eyes. But this blog was meant to be my little space and my space alone. And maybe, if I’m lucky, if I keep at it, maybe this will reach someone who knows that deep, dark place just as well as I do and realize that they too, are not alone.

After all, isn’t that why we all write?