I wrote that about a year ago and ever since I gave those words life, I’ve watched it slowly suck a little life out of me. By putting it on paper, I saw the cold hard truth – I am not a writer and the dream of being published does not exist for me. I had never pursued a career in writing because I always felt that it was just never meant to be. So I casted the dream aside and focused my talents elsewhere, all the while secretly wishing one day I could run my finger along the spine of a hardback book and feel each letter of my named embossed deep within the leather grain. To flip thru crisp pages and breathe in the scent of fresh printed ink. Words I once wrote by hand while hunched over a mahogany desk would now be published for the very first time, resting on a Barnes & Noble shelf, eagerly awaiting adoption. Just the thought of it makes my eyes well up with joy. It would be a very proud moment.
I snap out of my daydream and come back to reality. My love of writing will never flourish beyond some minuscule web address on the net filled with my random ramblings. www.diamondkt.blogspot.com is what I am and all I’ll ever be to the world. I am reduced to being a blogger (an unpaid one at that) and nothing more. This is me.
I have an unconventional writing style, which makes me unique, but at the same time probably inhibits me from being taken serious as a writer…or at least that is my belief. I don’t always use the correct grammar, despite what I’ve been taught. I don’t always follow proper sentence structure and I often utilize slang to get my point across. My spelling is atrocious, I struggle with past and present tense and I am a perfectionist who has much that needs perfecting. If those are my flaws/my weaknesses, what are my strengths? That I never misuse “their” and “there” and I have fairly nice penmanship?
You see, there lies the problem. I find more faults in myself than anyone sees, or at least admits to seeing, in me. That is why even though countless of people have told me I have a real writing talent, I fail to believe them. Actually, I believe them. I just don’t believe in myself. That doubt has kept me from pursuing any type of freelance writing job - paid or unpaid. Today marks 3 years of blogging for me and it also marks the 3rd consecutive year I settle for being just another blogger. Just another wannabe writer lost among the millions of other wannabe writers living their dream thru a Blogspot address. Perhaps 2008 will be the year I change that.
An e-mail arrived in my inbox just days before 2007 ended. A short note that made me rather glossy eyed, not because I was feeling sentimental, but because it came at the most appropriate moment and completely unexpected. A letter written by someone who is virtually a stranger, but yet feels like an old dear friend. In it she wrote…"And I couldn't help thinking to myself, how in the world can this man think that he isn't talented. But then again so many talented people do not see what others see in them. Dude you're good."
Just days before I had come across an opening for a freelance writing job in NYC. I would be writing for a startup company affiliated with The New York Times. It would be a side job for me as I would continue running my Network Security Consulting business, but a side gig that would fill a great creative void in my life. Just searching for a couple writing pieces to submit for the job brought a smile to my face, lifting my spirits some from what has been the darkest of times for me lately. However, my family has been anything but supportive. The negativity they fill my head with rattles my self-confidence, replacing it with the instable feeling of tremendous doubt.
Despite my biggest fear, failure, I’m applying for this freelance job in New York. I'm doing it not to prove them wrong, but to prove myself wrong. Prove myself wrong when I said “I am not a writer.”
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