There’s a parable about a guy who so enjoyed working on cars as a youth that he made it his career. As a devoted mechanic, he poured hours into maintaining other people’s vehicles on tight timelines, while leaving his own car neglected – fan belt chirping, brakes squealing… You get the idea.

That’s how I was starting to feel about my writing. I imagine this rings true for many who’ve made their hobby their vocation. Although the seeds for this blog were sown in 2011, I feel that the conditions are only now ideal for germinating my ideas – plus lots of new ones, now that I’m Mom to Baby Ell.

The biggest hurdle I had to overcome to begin blogging was the fact that writing was my full-time day job. Just like that mechanic, I felt I was in overdraft. I’d dedicated too much of my life to writing for other people, and I no longer had the energy to nurture my own creativity.

It was inconvenient and painfully ironic.

You see, I’ve considered myself a creative writer since the age of 7. I knew even then that writing was a calling. I don’t want it to be just a hobby, I asserted to my parents and to anyone who asked.

This dream underwent several edits over 20 years, as I naively tried to plot a certain outcome for my grown-up-writer self: fiction author, journalist, environmental journalist, city hall reporter and—finally—writer/crusader for non-profits.

For a brief period, I spent 100% of my days writing for a string of non-writer bosses who determined my worth based solely on their personal opinion of my work (while ignoring so-called industry best practices), and my ability to complete that work within a teeny timeframe. Yes – I know that’s often the reality of being a full-time professional writer, but I learned it wasn’t a good place for me.

For the first time in my life, I’d lost my identity as a writer.

I began to believe the lie that I—as a creative being—was only as good as the product of my frantic efforts to reactively research, brainstorm, write and self-edit in a 12-hour day – day in, and day out. Worse, I had given up on writing for myself. I wrote thousands of words daily while my personal notebook lay untouched.

Thankfully, I never stopped reading. I still needed my recreational dose of the written word, and I turned to the literary greats – as well as to great journalistic publications (like The Walrus and The New Yorker). But I don’t read great writing to be great at writing. That’s entirely subjective. Reading the work of acclaimed writers reminds me of the adage that Rome wasn’t built in a day. It reminds me that, when it comes to my own creativity, there is tremendous value in slowing things down.

(By the way, I did eventually move on from that zany job and I found an awesome one! With a marvelous writer boss, and with an allowance to write less and finally use my strategic-planning skills.)

I recently came across a Facebook post by wordsmith extraordinaire Elizabeth Gilbert, who is—in my world—a writer’s writer. Gilbert shared her take on a memoir by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, in which he described himself as “more of a workhorse than a racehorse.” He was speaking about his undertakings as both a writer and a marathon runner.

To my fan-girl delight, Gilbert has decided that she, too, identifies as a workhorse.

“Racehorses are beautiful and stirring, but that’s not how I was constructed,” writes Gilbert. “I’m never going to be a quicksilver creature. I need a lot of sleep and a lot of pasta. That’s just my nature. But I’ve realized over the years that there’s a steady dignity to being a workhorse, too. And remember – racehorses often get injured, or have to retire early. But a good workhorse (well-loved, well-fed, and well taken care-of) can work for years and years and years.”

Bingo.

If Murakami and Gilbert have found fulfilment in writing just a little bit every single day, then I’m a-okay with calling myself a workhorse, too. I no longer feel ashamed to admit that I’m so over trying to be a racehorse! This doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to write professionally; it just means that I’ll do it on my terms, while nurturing my creativity.

My view is that a writer’s writing should be the product of love – love for the creative process itself. I’ve missed that feeling terribly. I miss the “high” of being woken at 2 a.m. by a story idea so fully formed that it practically yanked my hand toward the pen and paper I kept on my nightstand.

This brings me to today, and to this – my first blog post. But contrary to this lengthy, me-centric entry, I find it challenging to write about myself, and I prefer to keep things short and sweet. My hope is that I’ll offer something to you – as I try to share my take on the themes of living simply and blooming where you’ve been planted.

I’ll be learning this blogging thing as I go, and I hope you’ll follow along as I try to rediscover the act of writing for the sheer fun of it.

Thank you for reading this!