I LOVE listening to podcasts! One of my favorites, The Black Girl Bravado, had an episode about “showing up for yourself.” Immediately, I felt extremely pumped and ready to get my life together. Sometimes, I get so caught up in things other than what I want or need to do. Of course, one particular “need to do” is creating the discipline of building my writing portfolio.
A significant lesson I learned when I graduated from college was that my experience and choices are mines. I want to tell you that there will be so many people, some well-meaning/some who just need to get a life, who will tell you what to do. Whatever you choose to listen to is exactly that, your choice. Not only are your decisions, yours, but remember God has the final say.
While listening to the podcast, I realized that I’ve often failed to show up for myself. I failed to do weekly blogs. The top criticism I got in terms of my career has been, “You say you’re a writer, you should write.” I’m not sure what was stopping me from just doing it for a while, but it took until I was in a therapy session at the breaking point. I told my therapist that I had writer’s block after I had read to her one of my daily journal entries.
“Well,” she said. “You obviously don’t.” (In my mind that’s what I felt like she said, haha.) It was homework-time. I had to set time aside just to write. That’s it. Whatever came to mind. It was one of the best homework assignments ever. All I had to do was write, with no pressure.
So then I wrote and wrote and wrote with no expectations, no deadlines, no obligations to anyone else. It was a freeing experience. I just dumped all my thoughts into the computer. Every story I wanted to tell my friends went on the page. It was a fantastic release.
Now, what do I do with all this work? I ran it through Grammarly making changes where I wanted to. Next, it was time to find a place to put it. I thought about my poor blog that I’ve abandoned for months. I decided to show up for myself and put together a plan to post weekly.
Next, I started to put together a portfolio of my work, just because I can. I was in boss mode, and it all started with a podcast and a therapy session and crying to the Lord. It’s time to be my own bawse.
#faith
Kou T. Nyan 