30,000 hits

When I started writing this blog two years ago, I honestly wasn't sure what would become of it or me. I don't even remember what possessed me to start writing it, because although I've always enjoyed writing, I was never someone who kept a journal, or who wrote anything down regularly. But I had a feeling that going to Italy was going to be sort of a life changing experience, and I knew that if I was writing something that was actually published on the internet that anyone could see, I would be more likely to try to make it somewhat eloquent and interesting. And oddly enough, it worked. I blogged nearly every day that I was there, it was a life changing experience, and the few people that were reading what I was writing at that point told me they enjoyed what I had to say.

Then the blog took on a life of it's own, especially after this past summer, when suddenly it received it's very own publicity. And then I realized that I had been writing regularly for nearly two years, and it was something other than singing that I had started developing a passion and identity for. In fact, for the first time this past winter, I started writing short stories and essays for no other reason than that writing had become a cathartic release for my creative energies. Plus I wanted to write down some stories and essays about my life that were (at this point anyway) too intimate to want to share with the entire world.

And now I can say with some certainty that I am officially a writer. Not a professional writer, not a published writer, but a writer nonetheless. Which is oddly liberating, because if you asked me what I "WAS" at any moment prior to this realization, I would have said that I was a singer, and that's all. Being a singer had become so all encompassing that I couldn't see myself as anything else. Of course, I had always been a daughter, a friend, a girlfriend, a teacher, a student - but the one thing that always defined me was my singing. I honestly never did any other single activity for any length of time. Sometimes having only one major thing that defines you can be a blessing - I certainly knew what I wanted to do with my life and for my career well before many of my peers, and this knowledge gave me a lot of confidence and assurance. But the problem with having one thing that defines you is that it's impossible to be defined by just one single thing during every moment of your life. And when that one thing is brought into question, when you're no longer sure if that one thing can define you - well, it can be a searing moment of disillusionment and even despair. In fact, you realize that letting just one thing define who you think you are is actually incredibly dangerous and certainly disappointing,

It's not that blogging allowed me to say, "aha! I'm not just a singer, I'm also a writer!!!" But it did allow me to realize that I am actually many things. I have capabilities to do things I didn't ever imagine, which means there are probably a lot of other things I could create and accomplish as well. It made me realize that any attempt to define the essence of who I am by something I do only serves to limit the possibilities of all the things I'm actually capable of. Am I a singer? Yes. Am I a writer? Yes. Am I an astronaut? Well, not yet, but nothing is impossible.