In Light of Failure

I didn't make it.

I failed the contest I've always managed to get in on the first round.

Here, I thought, was one of the really great pieces I wrote in the last year. It was vivid, to me. Full of direction and motion. Capturing movement and hinting at more, I loved the piece. Two reasons for that. One, it was from a dream. So those actions and descriptions were written, in a way, from experience.

Two, its one of the few things I've written since 2013 I've been particularly pleased with.

Its writers block.

Chronic, coupling with that realization as I hit my late 20s that I'm not as successful at teenage me would have liked to be. I've gone on about my career before but mostly it was bolstering the idea that career is not the main focus in life but I never thought of my writing as a career. It was just a part of me.

Frantically, I glance about the internet for a career I could jump into with out breaking the financial bank with reeducation, whilst still in the midst of moving across the ocean where international rates of learning are astoundingly high.

Where should I be now? Why am I not where I thought I should be and why do the words not come so easily.

I proposed to my Oma, who is always a source of encouragement with my writing, on the idea of taking some creative writing courses. Her reaction of "You should do it with out all that.", stung.

Stung because it struck at the reality of what was happening. Self doubt. Its seeped in me. Of course I can string words together as an adult, better than I ever could in my fervent writing years. But as nothing has come of it, confidence in my ideas and ability not just to string the words together but to contruct a foundation, the plot! began to waiver until I'm betting on old horses, and fires from before.

Really, its my first 'no' I've ever gotten, this contest failure. The 'no' from the outside world really was as loud as the 'no' I've been telling myself for so much longer, amplifying the self doubt.