Hi, my name is Anna Blanch and I am a writer.
Jeff Goins states my hope for my writing clearly:
“We have an opportunity. To write words that matter, to change lives with language.” (6)
So here goes nothing, I’m now a writer with two part time jobs to pay the bills.
With the part-time jobs for the near future I’ll be working towards the writing, editing, art-making, and teaching being the thing that pays the bills. But for now, this works. And it feels kind of poetic. Poetic and maybe a little cliched.
Yet, who cares if others have walked this path before me?
The craziness of my life makes more sense to me when I see each day as ripe with the opportunity to learn something new, as a moment when I might meaningfully connect with other humans, and as a chance to be creative and to find beauty in the midst of it all. Writing and editing of the thesis and all else happens in the early hours of the morning. Waking at 5:30am has never been more of a gift.
But let’s not kid. Life is tough at the moment. Prayer and one foot in front of the other is about all i can manage right now. Everything else is a bit beyond reach at present. The next month should see a number of things outside my control change shape and some pressure relieved. But for right now, (uncharacteristically) withdrawing feels like the way to preserve the little emotional strength I have at the moment.
I have been writing, but also uncharacteristically have not been sharing that writing. It has been time for withdrawal into myself, in part because to do otherwise feels like I might break into a thousand little pieces and I don’t have time to be put back together again in painstaking detail. Rather I’m kind of hoping that the cracks will have new growth mend them, much like what happens to bones in a walking cast, or green limbs on trees following a large storm whereupon those knobby bits grow over the split.
So, in the midst of all else: the hopes, the staggering heart break, the tiredness and anxiety, the sense of letting others down and not meeting my own expectations, the dreams, and the searching out, and the quiet prayers of my heart, and the loud ugly cries of my sadness. In the midst of all of this, I am a writer. I am a daughter of God.
