To Succeed.

I've spent a lot of this past week working through free-writing and paying attention to that creative artist within me. It's been extremely healthy for me to sit down every night and bang out one page, singled spaced diatribes about my day. I've also been reading a lot this week, most importantly a book on the art of writing called Thunder and Lightning by Natalie Goldberg. This book has really helped me understand myself as a writer and accept the fact that writing doesn't need to be brilliant or profound, it just needs to be honest, from the heart and accessible. One of the many writing exercises Goldberg speaks of in her book is sitting down to reread your old free writes and then spending another page writing down what you felt like were the points you harped upon in your free streams of consciousness.

That was the hardest for me because I had to introspectively analyze myself and my thoughts. A little part of me wished that I could have just deleted that giant word document and moved on, but alas, what would we be if we didn't change and grow from inward reflection?

One of the points I found myself focusing on was less of a point and more of a collection of mini vignettes of the most beautiful human beings in my life. I've always had a hard time letting people know how much they mean to me. I feel like they could never be aware of what an impact their being in my life has had on the course of it all and who I am as a human being. And I want them to. I want them to feel a hundred times better about themselves because they've touched someone's life in such a beautiful way that it should be announced. So I write. I spend my nights free writing pages upon pages about you all. Sometimes I am even able to share them with you, so that you can see how much you mean to me, how much you've served to mold me into a better person.

I hope that, as time passes, I am able to share my writings with you and tell you just how much you mean to me. If you feel the same way as I do, with those essential people in your life, I encourage you to remind them how much they mean to you in whatever manner you see fit. To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, "To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

Let someone know that they have succeeded.