The Backstory, ish:
There is a song by Ryan Caraveo with a lyric that says, “I make life decisions in the time it takes to brush my teeth.” This basically sums up my life from ages 15-25. Raise your hand if you can relate.
In my sophomore year of high school, I applied for a prestigious arts program at a school that I was incredibly excited at the prospect of attending. I made it to the top few applicants before I opened a rejection letter explaining that they would not be welcoming me as a student. As much as I’d like to say that my first true heartbreak involved a boy, or even a girl for that matter, I instead must award the 1st heartbreak trophy to opening that dreadful piece of mail. Even knowing before I opened it that it wasn’t going to say anything that I wanted to read; an acceptance packet wasn’t a simple envelope – I still see the words on the page in my brain to this day.
I made a choice in the following years to veer gently from the traditional path of higher education and attend a school that I thought would be, for lack of a better word, cooler. I studied the business side of art for all of 3 semesters (a rough guesstimate), before I jumped ship on that, too.
Without furthering the boring details, I basically failed to stick with anything career-wise for about a decade of my life. I spent a lot of time vehemently abiding by the mindset that my 20s were intended to be wasted on pointless nothings. While I don’t regret the way I spent my time or the decisions I made, part of me definitely wishes I’d invested a little more into my future self than I actually did.
ALL THAT BEING SAID.
It’s never too late. That’s what they tell me, anyway.
And writing has been something I’ve always dreamt of pursuing as a career.
My parents, they’ve always wanted me to write.
My best friend, also on the familial make-Paris-a-writer bandwagon.
My sister. My niece. My aunts. My uncles.
My husband to be? Don’t even get me started.
As a result, this blog was born.
But here’s the secret…. those people I just mentioned? They believed in this blog long before it was even an idea in my head.
They believed in me. They believed in what I was capable of accomplishing.
So my advice to you, fellow readers, is this:
Don’t listen to the voices in your head. They lie. They feed you darkness. They feed you bullshit. The people who love and care about you, the ones that exist on the outside of your skull? Those are the ones you should hear out. Those are the ones that nourish your self-acceptance when all you can seem to harvest is self-doubt.
Read the things you want to read, write the things you want to write.
Create the things that YOU want to create.
The rest will come in time. Give your brain room to breathe.
In the meantime, I wanted to share the question I’ve wrestled with longer than any other question. This internal debate kept me awake before I decided to launch my blog because it’s a question I’ve asked myself before making any other professional call, and the answer has always been “no.” Didn’t matter the time or place or situation.
I was never prepared to fail.
So I’m here to tell you, to ask you – look inwards and take a deep breath. Say it inside your mind or aloud – I don’t care. Just make sure you hear it either way:
Am I prepared to fail?
You’ve convinced yourself to start a blog. Hell, you’ve convinced yourself to get out of bed this morning! Before you outline anything: a day in the life or a breakfast schedule to power through the late nights of drafting content – ask yourself this question on a very serious level. Are you prepared to learn something new that requires you to fuck it up a little? You cannot – you WILL NOT – grow and develop as a content creator, as a creative, if you cannot come to terms with this reality.
Lemme rephrase that –
You cannot grow and develop as a PERSON if you cannot learn from making mistakes.
Thank you for attending my rant.