A Life on Fire...

June 4, 2014

I was sixteen.  I was in my bedroom, my feet tucked up underneath me, when I first cracked open the book.  I had just wanted a distraction, a nice read for an drizzly afternoon.  I didn't expect it to have such a profound effect on the rest of my life...

Growing up, I was an imaginative child.  Reality often bored me.  I remember sitting in science class writing prose.  I remember getting detention for a writing a short story with a swear word in it when I was thirteen.  (Freedom of speech, anyone?)  And then finishing my very first novel at the age of 15. It was tawdry, it was melodramatic, it was completely unrealistic...

It was me.

I've known all my life that I was supposed to be a writer.  I could be other things too but writing just coursed through my veins; there was never any doubt that as long as I had breath in my lungs I would be writing. 

The luckiness of knowing this so early in my life has never been lost on me. I realize how rare and special it is, not just to know what you are meant to do in life, but that you are actually lucky enough to be afforded the opportunity to be doing it.  When I was younger I had resigned myself to a life of blue collar labor during the day, and a life of writing at night.  I was certain the most exposure any of my writing would ever get was the occassional daylight that would hit my manuscripts while dusting my office shelves.  Because who would be remotely interested in reading my books other than me?  And I was content with that.

Until I read Walden.

He balked society, the norms and culture of the time and disappeared.  People questioned why?  Why?

Why?

Oh, how many times I have heard that same question for puzzled people asking why I do the things that I do...  Why do you travel so often?  Why do you love to write?  Why are you doing this?  Why are you doing that?

The answer is: I live a life on fire.

That book knocked something loose in me; I was so quick before to settle for simple.  And oddly, it took only a few amazing people to point out my worth before I began to believe it.  Isn't that strange? How it often takes a stranger to point out what we should have known all along?

Now I live each day with a passionate haste that it may be my last.  I very rarely use the word "someday."  I prefer to use the word "now."

What kind of legacy am I going to leave behind when I'm gone?  That's the wonderful thing about being a creative type: you can create something that pressed a snapshot in time, a freeze frame of the person who created it.  In that amazing way, writers can live forever.

That's not a bad goal to work towards.

But in the meantime, I will smile.

And continue to burn...

~A

© 2014 Angela Darling, All Rights Reserved.