Exhalations.

I was two semesters into a journalism program when one of my college professors pulled me aside and said, “Are you sure this is what you want to do with your life? Because I am not sure that journalism is a good fit for you.”  

It felt like a gut punch.   

Writing has always been as instinctive to me as breath. My whole life, it has been my only consistent dream. My other ambitions—doctor, opera singer, lawyer, interior designer—have ebbed and flowed like the tides. But writing has always been my first love, consistent as a heartbeat. I had chosen journalism so I could do just that: write.

I immediately bristled with defense. “But my grades are really good,” I said. “I'm here on a scholarship.”

“That's not the issue,” she said. “Tell me—why did you choose this program?” 

The question was suddenly terrifying. 

“Well, I’ve always wanted to be a w-w-writer.” I remember stumbling over the word. It felt booth foolish and scary, taking ownership of that desire, saying it out loud, claiming it as my truth: I want to be a writer.  

“It’s not that you aren’t a good writer," she said. "It’s that you are too good a writer to be a journalist.”

I got very, very quiet.  

She explained to me that journalists are supposed to write at a 6th grade reading level because newspapers needed to be accessible to all. “I just think your talent would be wasted if you tried to pursue a career in journalism. The editors would constantly be editing out your voice. Maybe you should switch to the English department instead.”   

So I did.  

I switched with the ambition to write.  

But that made my mom nervous. “Why don’t you be an English teacher instead? You know—just in case the writing thing doesn’t work out.”   

It hurt, my mother’s blunt practicality. I understand why she said it—it was sensible advice. So I rather reluctantly went into teaching, thinking I’d teach during the day and write in the evening. I took a teaching job at a tiny school, and I was shocked at how much I loved the work. It was fun, fulfilling, rewarding, challenging, and exciting.   

But there is no writing in teaching.  

Teaching English is not—and never will be—a writing job. It is a job instead of ceaseless reading—literature in class, then student essays in the evening. A few students shared my enthusiasm for writing, so I poured my energy into encouraging their writing dreams while allowing my own to languish. It was a sweet sort of suffering, and I do not regret those seven years I spent in a classroom, drowning in an ocean of words that were never my own.  

Then I was diagnosed with epilepsy, and that changed everything.  

I found myself unable to drive, unable to work. I suddenly had time to kill and things to express, so I started a blog. And it was good. I enjoyed it. People read it, liked it, shared it.

I wrote this way for seven years, sharing only a select few personal essays, keeping my fiction pieces and journal entries and other projects to myself, my notebooks filling with words like lungs filling with air.   

I was constantly writing, yet I still did not feel like a writer.  

I was holding my breath, lungs and notebooks filled to bursting, waiting for someone to notice me, promote me, publish me. It was a ridiculous fantasy I indulged, just waiting for some magical publisher to come find me because I was too afraid to put myself out there and endure the inevitable rejection of the publishing industry.  

But no longer.   

I’ve been holding my breath for seven long years, and I see now that I have only been suffocating my own dream.    
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The time has come to exhale.  

I finally started sending out some of my work to different online publications. It's a small step toward achieving that dream, but one I'd never really taken before. I'm focusing on small things for now: essays I’ve already written, ones that have been languishing in the archives of this very blog for the past seven years, just to see what would happen, to see if the interest is even there.  

There has been interest, and it has been encouraging. 

It’s time to say it, to claim it, to chase it: I want to be a writer.    

I want to be a writer.   

I want to be a writer.   

I will make myself a writer.