When Did I Stop ‘Being’ A Writer?

As long as I can remember, I have been a writer.  As soon as I learned to pick up a pencil, I started writing my own stories.  Before that, I had imaginary friends and made up stories for and with them.  As a pre-teen, I used to gather together all the pens in the house and turned them into characters in their own little dramatic stories.

Through all of the most difficult times in my life, writing has been my solace.  I wrote poetry about being lonely and about my parents’ separation.  Short stories have helped me to work through some of my deepest fears and most challenging confrontations.  Journaling has saved my life – and my sanity – on more than one occasion.

I used to carry a notebook everywhere I went.  In my years as a call-center agent, I kept it at my desk and would compose scenes, poems, and unsent letters in between my daily calls.  At one time, I wrote for and published my own online magazine.  For years, I faithfully journaled online – sometimes multiple posts each day.

These days, I mostly write only when something affects me so strongly that I can’t keep it inside.  I don’t blog as much as I could – here or in my less-public forum.  The last poem I wrote was over the summer, and I can’t recall the last time I wrote any kind of fiction.  How can I call myself a writer (as I have continued to do), if I don’t write?

Yet… the label has stuck.  I *am* a writer; I’ve just misplaced my voice.  Somewhere along the line, I started listening too closely to all the voices that told me I wasn’t a writer if I didn’t write every single day.  I started believing my inner critic when it labeled my writing as worthless fluff.  I accepted each short-coming and limitation, embraced them, and allowed them to come together to form an all but total block.  I stopped *being* a writer.

It’s time to start again.  I know this block took years to create and is going to take some time to pull apart, but it needs to be done.  I am, at heart, a writer; it’s time to start actually being one again.

Boys and Their Toys

Yesterday at the grocery store, Bug stated that he wished he had a purse.  With this concept popping up more and more, I know that continuing to ignore it will send the absolutely wrong message.

But what message do I actually want to send?  It’s a matter of my own beliefs versus society’s.  Frankly, if his interest in stereotypically “girl” toys, clothes, accessories, etc. is any kind of sign of who he will grow up to be… so be it!  I want him to be on the outside who he really is on the inside.  This is fine and works pretty much all the time at home, but the outside world is different.  As a child who was teased for being different, I don’t want the same for him!  But I also don’t want him shoved into a mold into which he does not actually fit.

So this becomes a problem of my own ‘middle-ground mom’-ness.  When he wants to try on the girls’ and women’s shoes at the shoe store, I let him.  I don’t think twice about his claiming pink and purple as his favorite colors, or having mostly female friends at school.  But I haven’t bought him Disney princesses or the aforementioned purse.  Right now, that’s where my personal line is.

So far (like with the post about dolls), he’s never directly asked.  If he does, my instinct is to tell him that these are arbitrary “rules” set forth by society, blahblahblah… in terms he can somewhat understand.  I want him to know that Mommy and Daddy want him to be whomever he wants to be and will always love him for being that person, but that other people have decided that certain things are for boys and other things are for girls. I want to support him without sheltering him from the sometimes-difficult and sometimes cruel outside world.

This is one area in which I struggle with raising a boy. I try not to make a big deal of gender. Unfortunately, the bulk of society still does, and while I try to ‘be the change I want to see,’ I also have to raise my child in the world in which we live.  It’s a struggle sometimes, but I do my best for him.