The Beginning… A Very Good Place to Start
The beginning of what? My time on earth? I’ll spare you. Due to a series of Divine miracles and a lot of help from friends (of Bill W.) I’ve been working as a freelance writer and designer full-time by default since March 2020 — when a certain pandemic which shall remain nameless, threatened the idyllic, healthy existence of my little town. Prior to that, for over ten years I waitressed most evenings and holidays for five sometimes six nights a week coast to coast. Well technically in various restaurants throughout Los Angeles and New York, but I prefer the dramatic hubris of it all. In August 2019 my friend hired me to write for her social media company and that was officially my first regular freelance gig as a writer. Prior to that, I had my first attempt at a feature article published in the Willamette Week. Beginner’s luck? Maybe.
I have always had multiple jobs as well as volunteering in some capacity to support my spiritual teacher and mentor with whatever creative project he happened to be working on at the time. (There’s a podcast if you’re into that). It wasn’t until meeting my first and only boyfriend that it was pointed out to me how “busy” I keep myself. Perhaps that was to avoid the pain I felt of not having met him yet (it only took 37 years).
It has always been difficult for me to make connections with people. Once made, it has always been intensely painful for me to let them go. Ever since I don’t know when I have had some sort of writing outlet. Over the years that has ebbed and evolved — I had many pen pals: from camp, a classmate who got kicked out of my school, a guy I met online, a teacher from school… and wrote in many journals. I lived in Slovakia for a time and wrote my family copious emails about the strange characters I met in my travels. In NYC, while studying acting it was suggested I go see a Jungian therapist and my journals became dream journals. One way or another, I have always been driven to express myself through writing. Despite that fact, it wasn’t until someone in my life pointed out that my sexual fantasies were extremely story oriented, and perhaps I had an aptitude for writing, that I actually began to consider it. I’m stubborn, willful, self-destructive, AND resistant. Most especially when it comes to pursuing my own creative expression. How about you?
I have never been good at promoting myself, or being seen. I worked jobs I hated for not enough money and drove myself into debt as though it was my duty to prove to the world how big a failure I could be. For a long time I thought I was meant to be an actress. It was the only thing I ever really pursued in my life. Looking back, I feel what really drove me was a desperate desire to be seen as anything other than what my family taught me I was — an attempt to crawl out from under the soul-crushing weight of shame and complete lack of self esteem that plagued my every thought. As I continue to make that effort, on a daily basis, gradually the weight begins to lift and shame transforms into an alien feeling: self-esteem and gratitude.