What if I did give up? What if I just wrote my stories and put
them wherever and forget about getting known or making money?
What if I just gave up on making a career out of it? I hate
selling things anyways, and I hate marketing more. If people
want my story, I’m happy to give it to them. I’m just honored
that they even want to read it at all.
Would my efforts be wasted? Would my college degree be wasted?
Would my talent be wasted? Would I be wasted?
I know I can’t stop writing. I’ve already grown the gills and
gotten immersed under here. I can’t turn back after what I’ve
been able to create and do, and how much of my life I’ve
given to be good at this. But this aching sense of failure,
this aching feeling I feel whenever someone says ‘marketing’
or I see a best seller or I see how many people could be
reading my book makes me forget to be grateful for those who
actually do read my stories. After all, the worth of one
person is without measure. If I can touch even one life,
wouldn’t that make my stories worth it?
The truth is, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m still in
that early state of my life where I have a small family and
I’m struggling to make ends meet. Maybe it’s because I live in
a world that puts so much on ones ability to make money and be
known–a world that says success is measured by how many
people decide to give it to you. Maybe it’s because of my own
insecurities whispering that I’ll never be enough, or that I’ll
never know what it feels like to get…there. Wherever there is.
But so many stories, and stories can hold great truths, have
said that ‘there’ isn’t found in the future, but here and now.
They say ‘there,’ that sense of accomplishment and success, is
not found by fame or fortune.
So…what if I did quit? What if I did just write stories for
fun and pleasure and gave up on trying to make anything of
myself?
What if I already have?
The Anxious Mallow 