So I found this thing called the 30 Day Writing Challenge, and I’m going to try and do it because I need to find my writing again. I’ve been without it for so long I have myself mentally whooped (as they say down south), and I keep intimidating myself out of writing. I have all these fears and insecurities now like “what if my writing really sucks?” or “what if it’s too hard?” or “what if I don’t have anything to say?” And then I decide not even to try.

Which is so dumb, because the whole reason I started writing in the first place was that it was fun, and I liked it. And I never intended ANYONE to read my stuff. I used to spend hours writing stories in spiral notebooks at home. Stories I loved but would have just as soon burned them to ashes before I’d let any other human look at them.

Now, of course, I want to be read. I want my stories and my posts to go viral, and I want people to pay me money for my work. That right there is what stops me from filling up the page anymore. I put the focus, the essence of why I write, into gain. I made it about entertaining other people, getting famous, making bank instead of what writing really and truly is to me at it’s purest…

Fun.

So, 30 Day Writing Challenge. It gives me some prompts and then I do the rest, and the only reason I’m doing it is for the joy of writing. Jerry Seinfeld said it best when it comes to maintaining creativity and success: “The work should be joyful.” You do it because you love it, and you do it for yourself.

I’m starting it off on a Tuesday in the middle of the month because I don’t fall neatly into place in any aspect of life. That’s just how I roll. Wobbly like a square tire.