The reason I write

Why do I write?

I'm asking myself this... mostly as an incentive to write something now. But... I guess if I think about it there are a few reasons. 

1. I write not because I like the actual writing itself but because I like to tell stories. I like the creativity of it. I mean, I can draw pretty well but that's just copying stuff down. I can't draw anything just out of my head. I can write, though. I can come up with stories and people and give them little imaginary lives and put it down on a piece of paper. I like that about writing. I like taking something from my own mind and then putting it somewhere else. It makes my thoughts real. 

2. I write for the dedications. I want to get a book published very badly. (That also means I want to finish one) I want to be able to write a dedication for my story to someone important to me. That's one of the main reasons I want to publish a story. If I didn't want to be able to dedicate my story to someone I might not, (aside from writing stories that may be important for people to hear) I might not need to publish a book. I could just write for myself. But I want to dedicate my stories, because I have soooo many people to dedicate them to.

3. I want my stories to be heard. For this reason I also want them to be important. I write for other people. That's the point after all. To share my voice. I mean I read to learn what other people think, so I ought to give a little back. So some people tell me I have things to say and I take them for their word. I write to tell other people what I think. Isn't that the point?

4. I suppose my selfish reason is that it's fun. As I said, I don't like the sitting down and typing for a few hours part, but I love my characters and it would be unfair to just leave them in my head.

I don't know if these are good reasons, or even the real reasons. I will probably always settle, not on these answers but just the answer that I write because I write. And that's all.

I write because I write. 

Words

"They've made me feel like a prisoner,

They've made me feel set free,

They've made me feel like a criminal,

Made me feel like a king."

~Words by Hawk Nelson

"They" are words and words, as insinuated above, are extremely powerful. Words can kill. Of course they can also heal. So how can we seek out healing words? Or better yet, how can we speak words of healing ourselves?

 Avoiding saying just plain stupid things can be very difficult. I mean come on, I'm sure you can think of someone that you can't stand. Now tell me, honestly, that you can spend an entire day with them without letting a single sly or rude comment escape from your lips. If you can I would be very impressed. So... the question, how do we keep ourselves from not doing just that. How we hold our tongues? The simplest answer...

Stop talking.

Now hold on a second. Say your a talkative person, that sounds impossible, even for someone who doesn't talk a lot they still can't just say nothing, ever. Well luckily for you, that's not the point. Stop talking, as I put it, doesn't mean you can't talk, it just means take a minute. Don't speak on a whim or without thinking. Allow yourself time to think or even more importantly listen before you speak. It's worth it both for you and everyone else. PLEASE... think before you speak.

Perhaps this sounds cliché, it does. I mean who hasn't heard their parents say "think before you speak" in the high mocking/teaching voice that they get. But maybe your elders have a point. Okay for those who need a little more convincing, think of a time when something mean was said to you. It's not hard, right? That's because things like this stay with us, we just can't forget all those rotten things that people say. It is one of the many curses of the human condition, we hold grudges. And even if we don't stay mad at the person who said them words can root themselves in a person's heart and take hold, whether it's true or not. It's our job to make sure that the seeds sown are good ones. Self-confidence, happiness, kindness, all things like these can be seeded just as easily as things like hate, depression, selfishness, loneliness. The main difference, though, in how these things take root in our lives is that the bad things are much more invasive; they are quick to erase other compliments and leave people in an all round bad mood. You'd know, right?

Good words can take root as easily as bad. The reason mean comments often have a stronger impact is that we will hang onto those mean things and then, because we did that, we reject compliments when they come. The answer to this, of course, is to forgive. Let the words go. It's your responsibility to let "bad" words bounce off of you without causing damage, absorb the good things, and not expect other people to do the same. Still treat other people kindly. Always. Don't expect that they'll just get over it. Believe that people will be hurt by your rude words, and don't say them. Don't say them whether you want to hurt that person or not.

Listen to people.

If you listen to people, really listen, not just sit quietly, then you can also have time before you say or do anything rashly. How do you listen? Think about it. Do you listen enough to keep up with the conversation while your mind drifts off somewhere else or do you listen? To really listen you hear that person with your soul and mind. You take in every word and process it. You sympathize with that person and you put yourself in their shoes before you go and disagree with them. Before you answer you also try to think of how they will respond to that answer, what will they think? Care. That's the most important part of listening. You don't even have to care about the topic, but care about the person. Have enough respect for another human being, with feelings and heart and soul, hopes and dreams, that you can take the time to leave your own personal thoughts and hear someone else's.

"Let my words be life
Let my words be truth
I don't wanna say a word
Unless it points the world back to You"

~Words by Hawk Nelson

Gifts

Everyone is born with an array of gifts and talents. Now, it doesn't have to be something cliché like being good at the arts or math or science, something like that; your gift could be being a good listener, relating to people, having patience, being brave.

For the sake of this argument I will use the example of two people I know. (changing their names of course) So the first person is in high school and I've known her ever since she was little; we'll call her Sally. Now when she was little I recognized one of her talents as being very good at creating and upholding relationships. She can relate to people and loves just about everyone. The second person I haven't known quite so long; I'll call her Mary. Now, Mary also loves people and she is great at helping people and she's so enthusiastic about everything and anything you could say to her. So both people, Mary and Sally, are very good with people, they've both been gifted with the ability to just love on people and to create strong relationships and connections. So what's the difference? The difference is that Sally used her gifts destructively and Mary used her gifts to help people and benefit the world. Sally's deep ties to people made her crave being similar so she made wrong choices in her life; she used her grifts negatively. Mary used her gifts positively and helps people all the time, making a real divergence. Mary is happy, Sally is not.

It comes down to the choice. The choice they both made on wether to use there talents in a way that would benefit or hurt the themselves and others. We all have that choice and the best news of all is that we have the choice to change our choice; though it is certainly hard. Still the choice is what we have and it's what we give the world. How do you want to make a difference? It doesn't have to be setting out to change the world, just changing your life, improve it somehow, you always can.

So my quick sum up is this: "People are born with many gifts. They can use such gifts to benefit or destroy them. Gifts were designed to give you a way to give to the world. Let's choose to benefit rather than destroy."

The New Year

So a new year. A new chance, as many people see it. I see it as another day, another day with another chance just as every day is. Just because we changed a number on our calendars doesn't give us any special opportunity for change. I propose that we have the same option for change every day of our lives the only difference in the turning of the year is the insinuative to make that change. For this year I will try to read 100 books and I want to finish a first draft of my fiction book. Now I could have made these goals any day at any hour but I saved such goals for the new year. Why? Because it is seen as an oppertunity. People are very bad at noticing the opportunities in front of their faces or sometimes they just ignore them, but the new year is a big fat obvious time for change and we don't ignore it quite as easily. Will this big marker in time people make their goals for the year, they plan to improve their life in some way or another, but how many people actually do it? My goal of reading 100 books for example I expect that if I really try I will be able to make 80 maybe 90 by the end of the year. So why do I put my goal at 100? I want a larger at life goal just like I want a larger than life time to set the goal it's more intuitive. People don't always realize just how much they need that big push. So I suggest this year, since you probably need that push, that you make a new goal to not wait for a big push and instead looks for the little nudges search for the opportunities instead of letting them pass you by because there are just so many every single day.  

Normal?

What is normal? The average, the usual, a conformity? People seem so fixed on being normal, or not being normal, without even knowing what it is. This is because 'normal' is an unsteady title, it's constantly changing. Many people now think that if you appear to them their definition of normal you aren't being yourself and maybe unhappy or unconvertible with yourself. While this may be true on some if not many occasions there is a very big flaw to this thought. The flaw is that your normal is the same as theirs. Normal isn't a thing that we can decide on once and expect it to stay the same, by our expectations of people to not be normal this then becomes the new normal. In the end people will begin to copy as they always do and this new normal will become the normal until someone goes searching for another one.

The reason we concern ourselves with the concept of what is normal is because we are so obsessed with knowing who we are, and that's good. We should want to know who we really are but we also want to know other people and we want these other people to like us. So we care about normal, we want to know if we are like other people, we want to know if we'll be excepted by the group or just who we are in the first place.  If we didn't care who we were we wouldn't care about normal. And while that's great and amazing it is a confusing puzzle in the game of life just waiting to be solved. Though it's a puzzle that never can be solved.