Written in the stars

I am writing today about writing. This blog, in part, has reminded me how much I love writing. I've been a writer since I was very young - dabbling in poetry, song lyrics, short stories, incessant exchanging of notes with friends, and attempting to start a longer novel on more than one occasion.

Back when I started this blog, I was undergoing a 5 week business building course called "Profitable Signature Advantage" which was all about helping me find my edge, my special 'sauce', and then bottling it up in a message to my ideal clients. As part of that process, I began looking through testimonials and feedback from clients to help me pick out what they saw in me. Given I haven't had a ton of clients, I brainstormed other places to get "feedback" and realized that I had a yearbook from nearly every year of jr. high through high school with lots of feedback from people who watched me grow up. In my search, I stumbled across my 6th grade autobiography I'd saved. It is a thick binder full of chapters I wrote about my life at that time. They were structured chapters to fit an assignment, of course, and I had a whole page of feedback from my teacher in addition to two pages of little comments from my 6th grade peers.

Nearly every single comment from my classmates was in regards to how good of a writer or artist I was. Almost every... single... one. My teacher also included a "prediction for my future" and told me she thought writing was still an untapped area for me. She suggested I get a group of students together and request an advanced writing group the next year. How had I lost sight of my writing?

Well, school was part of it. I lost sight of my joy for reading, as well, in high school. From 9th grade through all of college, I scarcely wrote much outside of the required papers and essays and I read next to nothing for fun. I'm guessing I'm not alone in this boat.

Three years after college, I'm rediscovering the value of journaling, blogging, storytelling, and writing song lyrics as a way of expression, clarification, and internal reflection. Despite being quite self-aware, I wonder if I'd have fared better getting through high school and college if I'd taken more time to write about what was really going on inside (and outside) of me.

What's going on inside me now is a rumble of grumbles! I need some more raisin bran with coconut milk.