A "Released" Amateur

I said that I wanted to write more about “writing.” Here goes.

I’ve never seen myself as an artist. I’ve actually seen a lot of things about myself and things that I love as simply fragmented and incoherent aspects of me and I’ve often struggled to figure out how they fit together and even tried to get rid of some because they just “didn’t make sense.”

The fact that I love to write has always been one of those things. It never really made sense or seemed useful (by the classic American standard: money). Also the fact that I love Italy, the fact that I also love mountains, but the fact that I’m a bookworm too and then the fact that…*sigh* the list goes on.

But this summer I feel like God has been addressing these things one after another and telling me to be me. If I am going to encourage others to be everything they are meant to be then I must explore this in my own life and God gives me unqualified permission to love the things he created me to love.

That said, I’m beginning to come to grips with the artist’s soul in me, and it feels really good. It’s not an academic degree, it’s no formation or education in me, it’s actually a part of my constitution. And I need to cultivate that. Because He gave it to me. Period.

It started with a question that someone in Italy posed me this summer. I was describing the whole legal education thing and what that meant for me and they said: “But what about your passion for art and literature?”

I had never had anyone ask me that before. It made me think, and then it surprised me how much it made me think. In my culture, art and literature is highly impractical and so in a way it is considered respectable to not pursue it. In Italy, it seems that this is less so. So, I thought a lot about that question. This summer I admonished someone to become all they were meant to be through Christ and then realized that there were areas of my life to which I needed to apply that very principle.

But this release has not been difficult, it’s been so freeing and it feels great. I ruminated on this question for a while and discussed it with a fellow writer friend. She encouraged me to ignore the “amateur” part and bolstered my already burgeoning conviction that I just need to sit down and start doing this.

And in all of the discipline I’ve learned all of these years I’ve never applied any of it to my writing. And it’s day 4 and I love this so far! I feel that what I’m offering on a daily basis (thus far) isn’t as deep as some of the posts that mustered in the past but I feel like I’m covering a breadth that I’ve hitherto never explored.

As far as the literature part goes, I have dared to sign up for a highly "impractical" course in law school called "Law and Literature." Only because I love literature. And that's okay. I'm really excited about the books (and plays) we'll be reading and having a forum to discuss it.

Anyway, that’s all for today. I will not always be able to say this so I’m just going to take advantage of the opportunity now: I love this “being who I’m supposed to be” thing. :)

(Day 4)