a stellar smashing

I’ve been having doubts.

Twisting, diving doubts that send my mind roiling with the reality that my dreams are going to be very difficult to reach. Doubts that strike me with paralyzing panic–the type that trigger my heart to stamping in my chest and make my breaths shallow and slow.

I mean, what if I never finish a book? And what if it never gets published? And even if it does, what if it’s the crap kind of book that no one reads, that you find on the 80%-off shelf at Barnes and Noble?

If I never publish a book, I’ll have to find another career. Something like editing or copyrighting…something at least related to the writing degree I’ll procure after four years of pounding out thousands and thousands of pages of my best work, never knowing if the carpal tunnel will be worth it or not.

Writing is just so uncertain. Unstable. And I’m not someone who deals well with uncertainty. As much as I’d like to be a free-willed flying individual, I’m not. I like to know how my works today will benefit me in the future. I like to feel as if I am constantly building a life for myself, working and learning everyday so I can somehow seize success and know I earned it. I don’t like to waste time. I need plans and lists. I need purpose!

My purpose as a writer is to write, and simply that. To write about love, life, faith, and the things in this world that let me know I’m alive. To write for us all as we search and pray and fail and seize life as the beautiful adventure it is.

But, what if people don’t want to read? What if I have nothing new to say? What if, after pouring the entirety of my passions into my work, I still end up selling bagels at Panera?

Oh, for faith…