Soul-searching

I'm doing some soul-searching lately.

One of my dreams has been to get traditionally published. Lately, I feel like I've been held hostage by that dream.

The original reason I started writing novels instead of short fiction was because I wanted more recognition (readers) than I would get with short fiction. I wanted to establish myself as a recognized writer.

The reason I wanted to establish myself as a writer was because of what has happened to me for the past several years.

Eight years ago, two things happened at once that turned my life upside-down: my department was disbanded by the university, and I subsequently was diagnosed with Bipolar II after the stress pushed me into a severe mixed (hypomanic/depressed) episode. 

I have moods were too good. The medication I take evens out my moods, so I don't have depression. But I don't have my euphoric episodes that I mistook for self-esteem either. So I don't look at myself as that amazing person anymore, and I realize that I wasn't, and am not, amazing at my job. (I still have low-level depression, and I'm not as quick at things as I was when hypomanic.)

Back to the writing. I fell into writing because I wanted people to think I was amazing. I wanted to compensate for how I'm doing at work. I wanted to feel I was good at something, and I'm a bit addicted to external validation. 

Where does this leave me? I don't think it's likely that I will get traditionally published, given the market. I don't think I will ever get the recognition I crave. 

What I need to do is learn how to live with it.

Day 1 Reflection: Dedication

My list of blog posts

I have written 693 blog posts including this post. In mid-April, this blog will be two years old. I write almost every day unless I'm fighting depression, and even then I usually write.

I don't always feel motivated to write. I would find it easy to devote myself to writing if I received accolades for it, or if I knew my writing impacted someone in some way. Rewarding a behavior results in more of that behavior -- that's called classical conditioning. In the case of my blog, readership and comments and likes would be the rewards for blogging behavior. However, I only have an average of twenty readers per day, and I have no idea whether they like my work. Comments on the blog and likes on Facebook and Twitter are few and far between.

Still, I write, almost every day. 

It takes dedication -- in my case, dedication to the craft of writing; dedication to the confraternity of writers; dedication to the concept that it's important to reflect, to soul-search, to speak truth whether or not anyone listens.

Dedication in the face of obscurity makes me more solid, braced by my convictions that writing is the work of my soul.