Where I'm From (Writer Version)

I am from tea mugs and spoons scattered across a messy desk. From inky, colored pens and marked up, dog earred books on writing.

I am from the dark little corner of the house with fairy lights strung up because there's no window, from the smallish, cluttered bookshelves that feel like everything I've ever wanted. From the sign outside the door that says it plain, "Mole End".

I'm from the nights Daddy gathered us kids together and read books, from big sister and summer days in the loft reading Trixie Belden, where all this love really started. I'm from noisy dinners where the parents just sit and listen and smile, and from bonfire evenings beneath the stars.

I'm from "arists don't get paid very much" and "most artists starve anyway", but God "has made everything beautiful in its time." I'm from scattered, elusive dreams, an awakened blindness and a groping for something in darkness. From nights of scribbled messes and days of "never being good enough."

I'm from too many books from the library and soft pillowy blankets and days you never want to get out of bed, and from books you never want to reach the end of. I'm from moments of sheer inspiration and days of black failure. From chocolate to ease the torture of uncreated things, to lure inspiration in, to forget, to write again.

I'm from boxes of half written story pages, slips of paper with a word, a sentence, a name, stuffed everywhere but my head. From the piles of notebooks where I never reached the last page. Yeah, and I'm from finished messes of stories that will never see the light of day.

But I'm from seeing possibilities where others see walls, from ordinary, every-day things and recreating them in ways everyone can see. I'm from recording, preserving, and keeping for remembrance, from bringing something new into the world. From keeping the darkness at bay.

And I'm from a long past of writers and artists who dotted history with their struggle: from the hope of leaving the world a little bit better than before.

Are you an artist?

"Art is the bringing of something new and beautiful into the world. Something genuine and good, something that does not darken the world, but leaves it a better place than it was before."

By that definition many things would be considered art, and rightly so. Your mechanic is an artist. Your hairdresser is an artist. YOU are an artist.

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