I Am...

My journey of becoming a writer has taught me many things. It has changed the way I think, it has altered my perspective, it has taught me the importance of healthy relationships, and it revealed the toxicity of bad relationships. But most importantly, it has taught me that to be a writer, I must not call myself an aspiring writer. I cannot tell people that I hope to one day become a writer. I should not write in my diary that I dream of a day where the world turns to me and the utters the word "writer." No. I must just be a writer. There is no hoping, dreaming, or aspiring, there is only doing.

Being a writer isn't dictated by how much money your writing has brought you. It isn't scaled by the amount of people who read your blogs or by how many people share your stories. It is measured by one thing and one thing only: passion. How much do you love writing? Can your soul survive a month, a week, a day, or even an hour without writing down something, anything? If writing is something that you do to survive, then you are a writer.

Now, writing is just my personal journey, but this mindset is applicable to all situations. I will use horse riding as my next example. Personally, I have never been on a horse (I am embarrassingly and irrationally terrified of many things. Sitting on top of an extremely strong horse and hoping I don't fall off is one of them.) but I think I can make this example work, nonetheless. To be a horse rider, you don't need to race in the big horse racey things, you know the one in Kentucky (maybe I can't pull this off), I'm joking y'all I know it's called the Kentucky Derby (shouts to Google)! Anyway, my point is, you don't have to race professionally in the Kentucky Derby to be a horse rider, you don't have to compete at an amateur level, you don't even have to compete at all. To be a horse rider all you need to do is have a passion for horse riding. Your soul has to cry out to ride horses and all you simply have to do is answer the cry and hop on that horse.

The world we live in has taught us that you must make money to be able to add something to your list of things that you are. (My list is: writer, traveler, dog lover, long walks on the beach taker, candlelit dinner enjoyer... okay, this is basically just my tinder bio, but whatever... I'M SINGLE HIT ME UP LADIES!!!) The world says to consider yourself a teacher, you must be paid to teach. To consider yourself a singer, you must be paid to sing. To be considered a pilot, you must actually know how to fly a plane (they might have a point with that one). How sad is it, that in a society we consider so advanced, we have lost all ways of measuring worth without putting a dollar sign in front of it. 

You can be an accountant and also be a writer. You can be a lawyer and also be a violinist. You can be secretary and also an actor. If you do something that makes your soul alive, don't call it a dream. Don't call it an aspiration. Don't hope to one day be that thing. Because you are already that thing.

I am a writer. A traveler. A lover. A fighter. And a fucking model (not like a fucking model as in a porn star, like I'm not a model that gets paid to fuck, but rather I'm just a good looking person that models and I used the f word to emphasize it. You know what I'm talking about? You know... You know.) 

What are you?