Teresa Hirst

“I haven’t received notification of any new blog postings recently, ” a friend wrote. “I really miss reading your thoughts and insights.”

He reminded me that I have an audience for my writing, which is something hard to cultivate and worth keeping. My writing continues off blog, but not out of sight. I’m publishing in other places, some online, some off, but none that feels as personal as this home.

Last August I attended a writer’s conference just days before I took a new full-time job. There I had a light bulb moment. I live a writerly life. I’m a writer because it’s how I observe, how I process, how I progress. Whether I’m writing it down, publishing it or not, I live this life. I felt assured that I would always retain the perspective that comes in observing life as a story.

But my life changed.

I took a full-time job to shore up our family finances. The recession hit our family hard and continues to pound us, despite my return to work.

The more my life changed, the more lost I felt from myself—the self who spent 16 years as a stay-at-home mom, service-giver, church volunteer, freelance editor, blogger, fiction writer, wife, sister and friend.

My comfortable roles diminished; my inexperienced roles increased. My personal time disappeared. And my perspective changed.

I fell out of the life I thought I’d created and into an unknown one.

When your life becomes the story and you ‘re too busy to write it down, that’s when you stop orchestrating every chapter, calling every crises the climax, and visualizing the ending before you’re even sure of the characters. (As if we can ever really plan the ending anyway.)

That’s when you began to trust.

And, only then will your writing really start to matter.