Just for today, I will not beat myself up for all my perceived failures. I will not question all my past decisions when there's no hope of changing the outcome. I will not give in to self-pity for not getting a masters degree, for not writing the great American novel, for not being the same weight I was in high school or college. I will not wallow in self-doubt about my abilities as a parent, a wife, an employee, a colleague. I will not give up. I will not stop dreaming, nor will I stop working towards those dreams. I will not let setbacks become road blocks; I will not not let roadblocks become insurmountable obstacles. I will believe in me. I will believe.
Here I stand again, speaking to an empty room. My thoughts aren't worth the cyberspace they would take up if I cared to tweet or post to Facebook, but here I stand anyway. I had no idea how long it had been since my muse had forced me to write. I used to write almost daily, poetry mostly, when I was younger and believed that someone cared what I had to say. I wanted to be e.e. cummings or T.S. Eliot or anyone who seemed to be so comfortable in his own skin to pour out his emotions onto a blank page. It took me a few years to realize that the writers who filled my pantheon of literary deities were not that comfortable after all, but wrote because not writing was more painful than the spilling of emotion. So I think I will take up my keyboard once more, wade out into the battle, and write.
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