You may have come to my blog to learn something, so I am sorry if I disappoint. Almost every writer, mentor, and online guru claims he has something to teach. What's one more even worth these days? Not much. The thing I know best is my own story, and it may be the only thing I know.
So, what is my story? I've recently noticed that stories are alive, like ... well, they're like life because they are life. Or at least they are about life.
In life, we all take detours or side trips. My most recent detour took me into the foreign land of real estate. I got lost in its labyrinth for a while. When I eventually learned that all paths in that place led to money, I did the opposite of what most people would do but what any writer at heart would do: I looked for a way out.
God bless all the folks hustling with cold calls and door-to-door visits to find clients in the real estate business. I've dialed my share of numbers and knocked on a fair share of doors only to realize that, even if I did succeed, the success the real estate sector was offering was not the kind I was after.
Now, I'm at a crossroads. I'm switching gears and opting for a strategy that aligns better with my passion for writing. I'm just going to do something that will get my message across to more people more clearly. Instead of calling strangers and going door to door, I am now writing about my experiences in my efforts to revive our society one post, one person at a time.
As a society and a culture, we are in an identity crisis. America is dying and it needs to rise from its mortifying slumber to survive. To do that, we need to speak to people's souls so they can reignite the flame of life deep within them. It takes good writers to do that.
Even if most people don't notice it, the world still needs good writers. The fact that we don't see the need for good writers is proof that we need them now more than ever.
Claiming that I'm finally answering a calling to be a writer is an ambitious claim. I am infamous for saying I'm going to do something and never following through. A word about that, though: Every little bit of effort counts because it will all come together in a common goal if we remain faithful to what God puts on our hearts. Many obstacles make us stumble when we are walking the path God made for us, but the more we get back up the stronger we become and the easier it is to surmount the obstacles.
Most of the time, God doesn't show us where all of our steps are leading because he wants us to trust him. It may seem like my decisions are disjointed, but only God knows the end goal where they all come together in the realization of the vision he put on my heart and soul, a vision I can only vaguely see now.
Abandoning the path
It's simple but not easy. Even though God shows me the way, time and time again I think I know better and refuse to follow him. It's a story as old as time.
Thus says the Lord: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls." But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ ---Jeremiah 6:16
I've often abandoned the path God made for me because progress on it seems too slow. There are days when it seems I'm getting nowhere or even going backwards. No matter how persistent and deep I hear God calling me to write more and just trust him more, my response is usually the same: I will not. Writing is too outdated of a profession, especially with AI now, I say. Also, writers get paid so little, and society just fails to appreciate them.
This is when patience is important.
"Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them, every day begin the task anew." — St. Francis de Sales
The realities of being a writer today can easily derail or at least delay a writer's career, but a good writer just uses the challenges of his day and his own experiences to improve his writing. I sure let the challenges of the day derail me. I deserted the writing aspirations of my youth to pursue what I thought to be more practical and lucrative work. I went and got my real estate license and tried my hand at the real estate investor business, only to get it burned.
Meanwhile I continued taking rideshare and delivery gigs to make ends meet. Both real estate and driving gig work still may play a role in God's plan for me as a writer, but it's time to circle back to writing more while tying in this first love of mine with the new batch of experiences that can augment my writing.
Embracing the present
My struggles to build a more formidable career as a writer have me looking back and forward, but rarely embracing the present. I had to search long and hard for articles I wrote years ago, that are now on the archives of the internet, to remind myself that I am a writer. Then, I looked far into the future at all I wish to someday write, and old Father Time looked me in the face through the mirror to tell me, "I don't have enough of myself to give you".
But the present is a priceless gift and my greatest ally. I don't write for the past, although it can give me the inspiration and confidence I need. Nor do I write for the future, but it can give me the hope I need if I simply trust God. It's right now, however, that provides the tools to fulfill my past hopes and the future's promises.
The Challenge for a Writer Today
A person shouldn't have to remind themselves of their vocation, but today's society has us so mixed up in so many different ways that it is hard for some people to know their place. It's especially hard for writers these days.
In the past few generations, the literary arts have gone the way of the other humanities like philosophy, history, theology, and visual art. They are seen as pursuits for the leisure class. They don't play a part in the more practical sciences that make modern life possible. Few people care if someone writes something well, and even fewer care to learn how to write well.
Those who don't specialize in the sciences, for the most part, don't have this same double ignorance for the sciences. For instance, someone who isn't an engineer may not care about learning the minute details of engineering, but he at least understands the need for someone to know how to build a bridge.
Not only does the average person not care about the minute details of prose. He thinks he already knows how to build a sentence, a paragraph, an essay, etcetera. Or he thinks the technique behind good writing is easy enough for AI to emulate.
So a writer is faced with a unique crisis. He not only has to master his art, but also explain the need for it. Thus, he has to find a clever hook or analogy just to draw interest to his work. In his quest to find such gems, he may venture into daunting new experiences just to retrieve something his reader could relate to that he could then implement into his writing.
Getting Philosophical
Finally, we come to the crux of the matter. For the longest time I thought I had to experience life more to write, to forge a rustic tone from the furnaces of reality so my writing resonated with the most respected men. But men today often pursue toughness just to prove themselves. It's a vain pursuit of honor, which is itself a vain ideal crafted by fallen men. All that matters is who I am in God's eyes.
Things like honor and respect may matter to the average person, but to the writer these are worldly concerns. The writer doesn't live in the real world because he sees it as Plato's cave. Rather, he lives in the world of ideals, which is everything outside the cave. Other people may think the writer is living in a cave as he shuts himself up in a room to write and ignores current affairs, but he thinks they're the ones in a cave as they concern themselves with the shadows on the walls---pursuits of vanity---while he looks at the truth outside the cave bathed in full light.
Lack of interest in philosophy, the love of wisdom, has brought humanity to a sad place. We live in a world of ambiguities and obscurity. We don't a united lifestyle anymore. We traded that paradigm in for more individuality. Now, instead, we have abstract social justice causes that elude concrete lifestyle implementation.
If we're going to unite through abstract ideals like a common sense of justice, we need great writers to communicate substantial ways to embody great ideas. The problem is we really don't have any great writers anymore who can practically tie profound ideas to reality.
Writing is an end, not a means
I am not claiming to have any answers or solutions for the problems I address. I am simply voicing my concerns. You may have come to my blog to learn something, so I am sorry if I disappoint. Every writer, mentor, and online guru claims he has something to teach. What's one more even worth these days? Not much. The thing I know best is my own story, and it may be the only thing I know. But if you understand the whole point of the arts and humanities, you know they are good in and of themselves with no need for any end other than themselves. They are not a means.
Perhaps modern society has lost an appreciation for the efficacious. Stop for a moment to just appreciate the wonder of existence, then you will understand why I am content to just write.
In my lifelong spiritual journey of conversion, I've gone through some barren wastelands---but none like the one I've been going through most recently. Nevertheless, the clarion calls from God that I've heard even on my most lost days have been consistent. He has told me, "Just go" and "Just write". In the quiet adoration chapel I'd visit as a young adult, when my job kept me stationary, I was reluctant to answer the call, but still I heard God say, "Just go". I didn't listen then and I still don't.
The same goes for the call to just write. Concerns about money have distracted me. That is why the landscape around me in my spiritual life is barren. This is where my choices have led me. I have no ambition, dreams, or aspiration except unattainable fantasies. God knew this from the start. He knew my dreams would be unattainable. But that is the writer's station. He is called to write about how things could be, all the while knowing it will probably take more than his lifetime for humanity to achieve them.
But at least I can write them down. The compensation I desire most for my work is just to know my ideas have been expressed. That is a writer's vocation: to spend all his days trying to bring his ideas to life, while knowing they may never come to fruition before he dies.
And he is called to do this with perhaps the most crude tool available: mere words. Writers have the dubious task of trying to make sense of the complicated modern world with one of humanity's most primitive technologies: written language. It's like trying to build a cathedral one stone at a time. Then again, many of the most beautiful and durable cathedrals were built that way.
As long as people keep making it difficult to realize great ideas, there will be a need for writers to at least write down those ideas, for someone to someday pick them up and bring them to life.
The vocation that tugs at my soul more than any is to be a writer. I'm a writer on a mission to rebuild Western civilization, because it has carried the baton of human salvation for centuries better than any other the world has seen.
“As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I’m not sure that I’m going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says, ‘you are nothing,’ I will be a writer.” -- Hunter S. Thompson
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