Blazing My Own Trail

I started my writing career, as soon as many of us did, in elementary school. Writing book reports was an assignment that I looked forward to while most of my friends dreaded it. I was raised by literate and liberal parents who taught me the beauty of the written and spoken word before I even started kindergarten. 

I loved writing as long as I can remember. I created stories in my head based on books I read. I didn’t write them down, but as my parents said, the key was learning to use my mind to create. The practice of writing would come later when 

I was ready. 

That time came when I was in the fourth grade. It was the 1970s, with lots of new teaching techniques being used. One of these was the catalyst my parents foretold about my creative side blossoming. The assignment broke our class into groups of three students each. One student would write the beginning of a story, the second student would write the middle section the next day, and the third would write a conclusion on the third day. Each day the assigned students were separated so there was no one student who could direct the whole story. I was assigned the middle section from my group. I found this rewarding because I had to take an idea from someone else, craft it in a way that continued the original thought while adding my own perspective and introducing new elements, while laying the groundwork for someone else to take up the story and be able to finish it. 

We weren’t given any guidelines for our creation other than a mandatory word count. The assignment was graded on readability and structure. We were told to make the finished product sound as if it were written by a single individual instead of a group. 

I suppose that if this assignment happened in acting school, it might have been called improvisation, but we didn’t know that term back then in the fourth grade. 

That team writing exercise inspired me to keep on writing whenever I got the chance. The act of writing with pen and paper was extremely calming to me as I went through my teen years and then to college. 

I never seriously considered that I might ever write and make any money from it. This was before the internet and self-publishing became a thing. Blogging was called journaling back in the day, and I filled countless notebooks with my stories and my diary. 

I was a prolific letter writer. When I joined the Navy, I kept a journal and wrote home to family and friends. Some of my letters were five pages long or more because I had to describe the places I had seen. 

I still remember walking along a dusty road in Greece when on shore leave. I sat down under an olive tree at the side of the road and started writing. I must have been there for hours, pondering if any Greek philosophers had walked that same dusty road, or sat under the same tree and thought about the world on a sunny day just like I was. 

I wrote a story about my day under that olive tree. I felt more alive than I ever did before. I write to recapture that feeling as often as I can, when the words and thoughts just keep pouring out onto the screen since I went digital.

As I write this, I recognize just how fortunate I truly am. I was taught to be an individual from an early age by terrific parents who let me dream and create without stifling my imagination and creativity. They taught me to make my own path in the world, one that would always be uniquely mine. 

I don’t live for expectations. I live for creativity and life itself. There are plenty of people who pursue some vague notion of success, but few ever achieve it. The chase is all they know. When I started writing on my website and on Medium, I didn’t do it to make money or gain followers. I did it because I needed to, nothing more than that. Stats and followers are meaningless unless you’ve gained them doing what you love. 

I will always be looking for my next story, for the next chapter of my life that contains new adventures and discoveries. I’ve never lost my childlike sense of wonder, and I hope I never do. 

Take the road less traveled for a change. See where it takes you.