Year of Living Authentically: When life happens.April was a little bit of a crap month. Something good would happen, something bad would happen. I'd hear great news from a friend, and then I'd hear terrible news from a friend. I thought I finally found a nice rhythm at work and had everything settled for a while and then my boss dumps this potentially huge thing in my lap with nothing more than a wave of his hand. I got a killer idea for a book and then discovered that something just like it was bought not a week earlier.
It was one of those months that it was impossible to even slow down enough to really ask: Am I being authentic? Is this what I really need to do? Will this take away from another part of my life and am I willing to sacrifice it?
Nope. It was pants on fire all month.
But I survived. I made it out the other side and now it is May. An opportunity to shake it off, restock my wine fridge, and hopefully take a nap.
As I was surviving the month, I was writing up a storm. I was unabashedly using my writing as a way to deal with the ups and downs and I wrote the hell out of my newest project. It reminded me of another reason that I write: escape. I can't experience everything there is to know in my life, so I seek the experiences of a million other lives to live, even for an hour or two. Or sometimes I just don't have the energy to experience my own life, so I need to borrow someone else's for a while
Especially in his fine company of writers on the blog, we create the worlds and welcome you in. We create the dragons and you help us fight them. We create the sword and you pull it from the stone with us. We are there with you, on these foreign planets or hobbit shires because we are looking for something too. And I thank you for letting us create that.
YOLA Authenticity test: Why do you read? Adventure? Escape? The thrill of first love? The passion of battle? What worlds do you escape to?
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Amanda AristaAuthor, Diaries of an Urban Panther
www.amandaarista.com
1 comment:
So glad to hear you've been writing up a storm, Amanda, despite a month of ups and downs.
I can't imagine not reading and I absolutely do it for pleasure. In fact, a major part of my mission as a writer to ensure that reading never becomes a chore because it's also part of he job.
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