The Lesson

I recently started a writing group. We meet weekly, sometimes more than once, to talk through what we’re working on, and really, to sit on Zoom and write.

I recently stopped going to the writing group. I stopped going because my plan had been to work on my book.

My book, or at least the idea for it, has been living in my head for years now. It’s a memoir (once a narcissist, always a narcissist?), about your “twenties”, but really, it’s about the years you are finding who you are and how you fit into this world. It’s about failures, struggles, successes, lessons learned — it’s about coming out the other side.

I stopped going to my writing group because I realized that I don’t know what the hell the point of my book is yet. Because I realized that I don’t know enough yet.

Because I realized that I’m not on the other side yet.

Maybe I don’t know exactly who I am and how I fit into this world yet.

Tonight, I finally re-attended the writing group.

I gave my fellow writer and friend the spiel. “Sorry I’ve been MIA. I realized I don’t even know what the hell I’m working on because I myself am still figuring out life — how am I supposed to tell others how to live it?”

She patiently pointed out that there’s nothing wrong with being a bit too close to the subject matter to write directly on it at times, but that the material I write now will help inform what I do come up with later. It will help me to later on see what questions I was asking during this time, and it will help me to better see what lessons I am supposed to be learning. While it might not be perfectly placed into my book in the future, the work I do now will only help guide me closer to where I want to be.

You see I stopped writing — I stopped creating — because I was trying to figure out the answers first.

I stopped, because I felt I wasn’t ready to start.

I thought I needed to know everything in order to be ready.

I thought I needed the beginning, the middle, and the end in order to do the one thing I love the most — write.

As she said these things it hit me, maybe this is what it’s all about. Maybe the lesson to be learned during all these years of questions and figuring out who you are and how you fit into this world — is that you don’t have to have all the answers in order to move your life forward.

That you don’t have to be “ready” in order to truly live.

When I really think about it, I do this a lot. “You can’t date, until you’re ready. You can’t go to the gym, until you build up a stamina running outside. You can’t put yourself out there, until you look a certain way. You can’t work on your business, until you get the certification.

You can’t write, until you know the ending.

You can’t do X, until you accomplish Y”.

You see when I stopped writing, I started searching. Searching for what the answer was — what the ending was. What it was I was trying to say. But the thing is, answers don’t come in slamming your head against a wall to find them. They don’t come from putting your life on hold in order to “be ready” for them. They come in going out into life and living them.

They come in experiences. They come in trials — in errors. They come in doing things you love, and moving away from things you don’t. They come from doing the things you don’t feel “ready” for. They come in living the life you want, not after you accomplish what you think you need to accomplish or know what you think you need to know in order to deserve it — but living the life you want, right now — today.

For me, my writing is how I live. It’s my way of experiencing my life on a whole different level — of comprehending and learning and growing — of finding my answers — of finding my ending.

We cannot stop experiencing life because we think we need to accomplish something first, to know something first — to be something first. Because our experiences in life — those are how we will accomplish it, those are how we will know it — those are how, ultimately, we will become it.

Maybe I don’t know exactly who I am and how I fit into this world yet. But maybe I don’t need to.

Maybe all I need to know is that I’m going to keep writing — to keep living — to, slowly but surely, figure that out.