I was lying on the basement futon early yesterday morning, eyes closed and hoping for a little more sleep, when this thought hit me, and it seemed so suddenly obvious that I wondered why I hadn't thought of it sooner:
What am I building? I am building myself.
I quickly realized I meant something different from "working on myself." Working on myself is: I've got Stuff and it gets in the way so I'm trying to deal with my Stuff.
So while I've had (and continue to have) plenty of Stuff to work with and through, that's not what I mean here.
It's like this: How many times have I had that one conversation on the chairlift, the one where the friendly stranger asks, "What do you do?" and I say that I'm a writer, and then she inevitably asks, "So where can I read what you've written?"
I used to answer, "Sadly, nowhere yet," and I'd tell stories about publications here and there, about hating freelancing, about unpublished novels. Now when I say I'm a writer, I can share a URL and say, "Check it out and see."
I am building a person who writes and edits and publishes as a daily practice.
I am building a person who is building a body of work and, slowly, building something out of that body of work.
I am building on old techniques and building new ones. So I am building a person who builds on and builds with.
Work the process, trust the process, evolve the process: I am building a person who does these things.
I am no longer just calling myself a writer. I am building a writer.