The writer in me

This world seems so full all the time, almost like it's bursting at the seams. Full to the brim of interesting people, of untold stories, of passion and flair and unsuspecting circumstances. So often it can seem that a person born of dreams must shed that skin to become a person of the people. A person who fits the masses and works within the constraints of a 'normal' life. You know, that normal unimpressive vanilla life. The 9-5, the evenings in front of the soaps, the days filled with countless repeats, 2.4 children and a couple of cars.

I can't live a life like that.

So often I feel like an outsider, so often I feel like I just don't fit. And so often I have to remind myself that I'm not meant to.

When I think the things I think and say the things I say, sometimes I realise I'm different in so many ways. For most people of my age life fits - it just works. For me that's never been the case. Maybe I don't let it. Maybe I question so much so that I'm alienating myself from the reality most live. And maybe, just maybe, I was meant to see the exceptional in everything.

I love talking to people - their lives fascinate me, their stories, their numerous voyages through the world inspire me. Everyone in their own direction, everyone in their own skin and yet they all feel conflict, they all feel those things that no one wants to admit to. Understanding those stories, those everyday lives, listening to their perspectives; everything falls away from them, and within twenty minutes you have an insight that their closest family member probably doesn't even know.

And that's easier, to tell a stranger, than to tell your closest friends. I feel like we all hide, we have these secret lives, these identities, these personality flaws, that we all do so well to keep. But the truth? The truth is that behind all that we're all trying to learn the same lessons, we're all after the same answers and every single one of us can learn something from another.

There's no point hiding - that's not helping. If you give just a little of yourself, of you and the things you've been through to another, you may just guide them down a better path. You may stop them at some point in their tracks and give them better direction. Or you may just be the shoulder they needed at just the right time.

So time for me to give a little and stop hiding the one thing I've been pretty good at hiding.

I'm meant to write, in my heart I know I have to write. I write to make sense of this world and without it it makes no sense at all. To share my thoughts with someone, anyone or no one still means I'm sharing them. I have diaries and journals and notebooks galore! My thoughts are scattered across so many pages and one day, some day I'll write a book. But until then I need to make sense of the need to write. Because without it I feel like I've lost my way.

I used to be a journalist, then an Editor, but I was never all that good at either. It was so restrictive, so bound, creativity had a leash and that ultimately destroyed me. But I'd always sneak into my journalism, a little bit of me. Whether it was the story of why the music moved me, or how meeting someone affected me, there was always something for ME to say. Now I am without those restrictions and I've stopped - as if without a deadline there's no need anymore. Recently I've realised this is something I have to do. And while I've always refused to put my real name to it, I'm trying to understand what I'm hiding from.

The difference between writing as a journalist and writing for myself is that this is all me. I feel naked, I feel like the bandages will slowly fall and the wounds, everything I've done so well to hide, will eventually fall into light. And I have to be okay about that. Because I opened this story if you like, with one thing in mind. We have to give a little of ourselves to help guide others.

At some point I told myself the market was saturated with fellow writers, people trying desperately to do their own thing and getting nowhere. And I thought that was a good enough excuse not to try. Now I realise, people open up to me everyday and all the world is asking is that I open myself up to whoever wants to listen.

So here goes nothing... the start of a new chapter. I need to be okay with writing for myself again. And while I'm pretty sure that finding a voice of my own, when I've been a mouthpiece for numerous publications, is going to be difficult, I'll set myself the task anyway. Because failure can't be found in trying, it can be found in finding an excuse not to bother in the first place.