You’ve Got This!

I feel like being a creative person and wanting to have a career in a creative or artistic field is one of the hardest things that a person could decide to do. I say that because I am one of those people. Creating things that I love for a career sounds amazing, but knowing that I want it to be a career and not just a hobby makes it so much more difficult for me, personally. And I’ve known others who have said the same thing as well.

It’s like once I put the pressure of needing to make money from my art on myself, my brain completely shuts down. I love to write, like creating fictional stories or just ranting about things I like or dislike, but once I decided that I wanted the world to read it, I stopped. My brain said, “Absolutely not.” I started to reread things I’d written over and over again until I hated them and decided that they couldn’t see the light of day.

I think that everyone is their own biggest critic, but it’s just so hard to share something that you’ve put your heart into with people because if they reject it, then you know that it will hurt so much more. It almost feels like they are rejecting you. I wanted to regularly write on my blog about any and everything, but I stopped posting. I had almost thirty posts in my drafts, but wouldn’t post a single thing. None of it felt good enough, or it felt too raw and like it showed too much of myself to let anyone see.

I have never been a fan of showing my true emotions to anyone, so to write something that I connected with so deeply, then try to show it to anyone absolutely petrified me. It felt like I was standing naked in a crowded room. It was the scariest thing that I could ever imagine doing. I wanted to because I wanted to be authentically me, but rejection is one of my biggest fears. I hated the idea of upsetting people or people not liking me, but since I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter. Who cares if someone doesn’t like me.

I am a people pleaser deep to my core. It was so ingrained in me that I didn’t really start to discover what I wanted for myself until just a few years ago. I knew what I’d always loved to do and what made me the happiest, but I didn’t think that I could really try to do any of those things as a job. I came from a small area where big dreams seemed silly. I thought I needed to hurry up and have kids and a family and settle down. Like I needed to be happy with a basic life where I did what everyone else around me did.

Growing up, I always said that I wanted to be a teacher or a nurse. I never wanted to do either. I had adults around me saying that those were good and stable jobs, that those were the best jobs to have because I could help people and make a decent living for the small town that I was in. Right out of high school, I started college with the intention of going into nursing. I did well in my classes, but I dropped out after one semester. I took a while off, then decided that I wanted to go to cosmetology school, but those plans got put on hold until after I had my oldest child, moved to Hawaii, then back home again.

I enjoyed cosmetology school. It was so much fun, and I genuinely loved styling hair and doing makeup, but it was still not what I really wanted to do. It was a more creative field, which I did like, but I was never fully happy once I was out of school and working in a salon. From the time I was young, I’ve always written things, whether it was poems, stories, or just journal entries. I loved to write poems, and when we had a writing assignment in English class, I loved doing it.

Even after high school, I’d always write. While I was in cosmetology school, I started writing fictional stories with multiple chapters. Writing was my one constant. My love for it never changed, no matter how old I got or what other circumstances changed. I feel like my love of writing may have stemmed from my love of reading. I have always been an avid reader, and I loved how someone could tell a story and have you so wrapped up in the lives of fictional characters that you felt like you knew them. I admired that. I wanted to do that.

But once I decided that writing was what I wanted to do, I no longer could. I would make up any excuse not to write. I would get so frustrated because I didn’t like how something came out, and it was like I couldn’t get it right no matter how hard I tried. I wanted nothing more than to write and have people enjoy what I wrote, but I was too scared to post it. I still am, if I’m being honest. It feels like you’re seeing a part of my soul, and I don’t like that. Sometimes it seems easier to get a “regular job” and not stress myself out so much about it, but I don’t want that. Writing is everything I’ve ever wanted to do, and I genuinely enjoy it, no matter how much it may frustrate me at times.

I guess my whole point of this is to say, go for what you really want. Don’t let people discourage you or push you into doing something that you know you’ll never truly be happy doing. It’s okay to take a leap of faith sometimes. People will always talk and judge, but it’s because they have nothing better to do and aren’t happy with their own lives. I’m going to try. I’m going to do my best to do what makes me happy. I’m going to put myself out there even though it doesn’t always feel comfortable. It may not always be the best, and I’m sure I’ll miss the mark more than once, but the important part is that I’m going for it. I’m tired of standing in my own way.

You’ve got this. Believe in yourself. Insert whatever other cliché makes you feel powerful and like you can kick ass and just go for it. I’m going to.