retrospective

Ok, let's see if i can keep this up and make it to, 10? post-titles starting with 'r'? Ready, set, go.
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Anyway. Thinking about This Writing Thing. i've been doing it for about 2 to 3 years now. It's been ... interesting.
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Good things: lots. Meeting lots of cool and interesting people, especially overseas. Seeing, even living for a while in, some cool new places. Testing myself by doing things i've never done before. Learning that, when i have something urgent to say, i actually have the ability to say it well, in writing that does speak to people. The joy that comes with doing what i love well, being affirmed for it by people-who-know, and knowing somehow that it does make a difference to the lives of a few.
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Bad things: enough. More than enough. The instability and uncertainty that come with the way i've been trying to make space and time for writing in my life. The isolation and loneliness that come with, firstly, a vocation that demands so much solitude, and secondly, prioritising writing in a society where people who make such a choice are few and far between. The considerable financial sacrifice that means i have to live frugally, much more frugally than the majority of my friends -- and the consequent difference in lifestyles that does have an impact on my social life. The noise and nastiness that come with being amongst a community of deeply-broken people, all acting out their brokenness in their various and different deeply-broken ways. (It's sad, but true: the people who feel the need to write -- and i don't count myself among them -- are the ones who are really wounded in some way or another. Normal happy psychologically-healthy people don't need to write. They may want to, they may be good at it, but it's only a need for the deeply-screwed-up.) The values-conflicts that i keep experiencing because people in the writing circles almost invariably have values that are quite different from mine.
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See. The paragraph for Bad Things is so much longer than the paragraph for Good Things. Not that paragraph length, the quantity of words, should be any indication, of course. But still. But still.
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i think, the long and short of it is, to continue to prioritise writing in my life the way i've been doing, would be bad for me. i will still write: the calling was real, and i don't doubt it. And 'wasted talent' is too much of a pet peeve for me to give up this thing that i believe God has gifted me with. i still do have things to say, and i still want to say them well. But to continue putting writing at the centre of my life, at the expense of everything else -- no. i can't say it's been really good for me, and i'd be a fool to continue down this road. So the task now is to find some way to make time and space for the writing, without pushing everything else aside in the process. To find a way to write, without necessarily doing all the peripheral stuff that comes with doing it as a quasi-career-(that-doesn't-even-pay).
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Ok then. Big Decision made, and this will pave the way for other decisions after it.
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