“Then a hurricane came, and devastation reigned
Our man saw his future drip, dripping down the drain
Put a pencil to his temple, connected it to his brain
And he wrote his first refrain, a testament to his pain”
~ “Alexander Hamilton”, from the musical, Hamilton
Yes, I referenced the award winning musical, Hamilton, when describing myself.
No, I was not referring to his skill or fame,
But rather, to the power and influence of a man’s own hurricane.
In late 2014, as Halloween was fast approaching, I found myself struggling. A thirteen year career in teaching had come to a long and exhausting end. Like a hurricane, emotions were swirling round my mind. Gale-force winds of memories, filled with embarrassment and regret, swept through, kicking up waves of self-loathing. Old anxieties and fears thundered away, deafening any self-confidence that remained. Whatever creativity I had curated in those years teaching, was drowning under torrents of self-doubt. The shelter I had built to weather uncertainty and insecurity, was poorly planned, and fell apart. I was inundated, and needed to escape. Writing was going to be my last line of defense against the storm.
Writing had served me well during my awkward teens, up through my turbulent college days. And then quite a few times while teaching. But I wanted to make this writing stick: I always had questions and ideas, and having it exposed on a screen made it easier for me to collect and dissect them. It was a way of sorting things out. If I did it regularly, my mind would be better organized, and my writing would improve. It was going to set me free.
So, without much planning, I turned to blogging and tried to make daily writing a habit.
On October 19, 2014, I started a Blogger account (with what I thought was an apt name, and clever headline). Like most things in my life, it started with great promise and passion, but also poor planning and skill. From the start, I was proudly publishing a post a day, but I was not following a blueprint. The foundation was not rebuilt: my mind was filled with too much anger, frustration, and regret. The walls went up fast, without proper framing: I never learned self-discipline, how habits form, why failure was a part of growth. Resources could not meet expectations: quantity replaced quality. And if you do not know a lot about roofing, the roof will either leak or collapse: I did not bother to research better ways to build habits, or improve writing. Finally, because I was anxious and afraid, I designed the interior without input, so it ended up bare and uninspiring: I was too fearful to cultivate the relationships and experiences that were needed to create more convincing plots and characters. It was luck, however, that was holding my house together.
But, my luck ran out eventually, and like previous attempts at self-improvement, my blogging was washed away by the next tempest.
On July 21, 2015, I published my last post. Of the nine months my blog was public, only two had consecutive daily posts for the entire month. Several months had only one post. The last line of my last post read: “That was until the torrential rains interrupted this middle-aged man's hike.”
(How fitting!)
But this storm, too, shall pass.
(And it did.)
(And it did.)
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