Why I write

I started writing as a kid. I made lists of thoughts, things I liked, things I wanted, people I thought were cute, and my favorite animals and names. Little by little, those lists turned into sentences, short stories, song lyrics, and poems. This cracks me up now because I truly wish I still had those early song lyrics. Kenny Rogers and Eddie Rabbit were my inspirations. I was five.

In my pre-teen years, I started recording every “important” interaction with boys. The days before I understood my attraction to girls. Any flirting, phone calls, or hand-holding with boys got documented like it was breaking news. Somewhere inside, I think I wanted to write the things I couldn’t say out loud. And honestly, I thought that’s what journals were for: emotional gossip. I took that responsibility very seriously.

My first journal that wasn’t about love interests arrived in 1991, during my first trip to Germany at fifteen. I recorded everything—how I felt, what I saw, what I tasted, and the alarming fact that my host mom ironed my underwear. I didn’t want to forget anything, so I wrote it all down. At first, I imagined my parents reading it because they wanted every detail, but somewhere along the way I realized I needed the journal for me. Just me.

Around the same time, I fell in love with writing letters. I wrote to my German host family, to friends who moved away, and even to myself for the year 2000, which felt so far away and impossible to reach. I loved planning what I wanted to say, but I hated not hearing the other person’s voice or getting instant reactions. I would write and re-write letter after letter because they were never good enough, not interesting enough. I hadn’t yet learned how to take life in and enjoy the little things. My life was bigger than I realized, I think. Eventually, I stopped.

In school, I was good at many things but exceptional at very few. I loved German and photography, but writing was the first thing that felt like it belonged to me. I never said that out loud because I didn’t know whether my peers had noticed my skills. I was afraid to admit a feeling that only I felt. Thankfully, a few teachers noticed. My ninth-grade English teacher, who wasn’t my biggest fan, once wrote on an A essay: “This was excellent. Now if we can get you to apply yourself the same in other areas.”

I was equal parts offended and proud. It was my first true writer’s critique.

In my junior year, I took a creative writing class. Plot wasn’t my strong suit, but I loved anything sensory or descriptive. Mrs. Whitehouse always said, “Don’t tell me your character is nervous; show me.” We shared our work openly, which meant seeing how other students observed the world. Some of them wrote with an intensity, almost psychedelic enthusiasm. It pushed me to look closer, to notice more. I wrote in my head. A lot.

In college, my writing kept following me. A professor requested that I be placed in her Advanced Freshman Composition course. I wasn’t longing for harder work, but I enjoyed the ego boost. I probably should have listened to my instincts. I wasn’t ready for the level of dedication the class required, and my procrastination habits betrayed me. Still, I learned how to form arguments and how to write clearly. It was useful, even if I didn’t appreciate it at the time.

I later enrolled in another creative writing class. The famous professor was on sabbatical, so we had his understudy. I came prepared, raised my hand, did the work, but my creativity never flourished. Fiction was not my thing. Character development for people I had never met felt disingenuous. My classmates seemed to sprint ahead while I stalled completely, often in full-on embarrassment. Halfway through the semester, I just wanted to survive, get a B, and retire from creative writing altogether. So I did.

Instead, I poured myself into structured term papers. I wrote well, wrote often, and watched my grades climb. I was onto something. Then college ended, and I moved into teaching high school, where creativity was something my students did while I graded.

While teaching, writing started tugging at me again. I missed the intellectual discipline of academia and longed for a creative outlet. Life answered by giving me a long-distance relationship with my future husband. Back then, dial-up internet meant we wrote long emails. We swapped childhood stories and cultural differences, and somewhere in that exchange, I discovered a new skill: creatively presenting truth. Nonfiction writing.

When I moved to Germany, I occasionally wrote about my experiences—the people, the frustrations, the cultural differences that I was desperately trying to understand. I even promised myself I’d write a book called How to Make Friends in Germany (Psst: You Can’t!). I had the title. I had the material. I just didn’t have the discipline or the faintest idea how someone becomes an author. I had never even met one.

In a group discussion with my English learners, someone asked me if I could do anything besides teach, what would it be, without hesitation said, "An author!” She smiled and said, "I can tell you’d be a great author." I could sense that too. I would totally be a great author.

Grad school changed the kind of writing I did but not the fact that I loved doing it. Academic writing became my new passion. I loved synthesizing complex ideas and explaining them clearly. Numbers didn’t interest me. People did. Why did speakers behave the way they did? Why did language shift? I loved the storytelling buried inside data.

During grad school, I got heavily into animal rescue, which became another outlet for writing. I created rescue posts, bios, pleas for help. They resonated. People paid attention. I was telling true stories—short ones, emotional ones—and it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

And yet, I kept stepping away from writing because it felt indulgent. Fun. And fun felt irresponsible when life was pushing me from one obligation to the next.

When the COVID pandemic hit and I finally stepped away from a toxic work environment, writing resurfaced. I began 2.0 You Are Awesome! as a way to understand myself and the tectonic shifts in my life. It was therapeutic, energizing, and grounding. But when I needed a paying job, the book returned to the back burner. Whenever I stumbled in my relationship or felt crushed under work stress, I turned to writing again. I hoped each essay would someday fill a chapter.

Then I worried about something bigger:

What happens if my life keeps changing faster than I can write about it? How do I end a book that hasn’t ended?

I think that’s why I stopped. Writing an ending felt too close to living one.

Then this past summer hit—harder than anything I've ever experienced. I didn’t recognize myself. I was in physical and emotional pain, sleepless, struggling to function. And without thinking, I went back to the one thing that had carried me through every version of myself since childhood: writing.

Now, my goal is to make writing my primary career. I’ll still work other jobs while I build toward it, but writing is the one thing that has carried me through every version of my life. It’s where I go when everything feels too heavy to hold alone. And I’m finally ready to choose it with intention, not hesitation.