Three words I hadn't said. - Charlotte Family Photographer

Until this past week I had never said three words.

Lots of people are these three words. I’ve looked around the world and seen people who embody these words. But they were never me.

I would sit down to work everyday.

At the end of the day I would say, ” I got nothing done.”

I would work and work. Still, I would get up from my important work and say “I got nothing done.”

I was used to checking off lists for editing a photo shoot. But photo shoots these days are few and far between.

I was used to watching a client move a long a progression board. I would check off each piece of the project, getting closer to done.

Now, I am never close to done. I sit at my computer and it’s become the place where I get my least amount of work accomplished.

Why I never thought I got anything done

One week ago, in a moment of realization I said to Mike, “I think I’m feeling like I get nothing done everyday because my job is to write stuff. I write blog posts and articles, workshop curriculum and emails.”

Without even paying attention, all of my shooting and editing and daily work had turned into something else. For quite awhile now I’ve not been able to figure out what that something else was.

I didn’t know

Road tripping a few days later with my friend, Melanie, I told her the story of finally understanding that my job is to write all the time. She looked at me and said,

“That’s because you’re a writer.”

I think I saw those words hanging out in the air.

It felt like a gust of knowing almost blew me into the window of the car door. Not once have I called myself a writer. Not once had I considered the idea of writing as my career or profession. I started a book over a year ago but I had yet to see an author looking back at me in the mirror.

In the days since the revelatory road trip it feels as though my world and my life have suddenly expanded.

It’s become bigger and smaller and scarier and calmer.

Every once in a while I whisper to myself, “I’m a writer.”

And now

Mornings that I used to dread, because of fearing the usual expectation of getting nothing done, have become the sacred time and space of being ready for words to meet paper.

I was resisting and oblivious to what now seems so obvious.

Declaring it here, now, is a little bit terrifying and a little bit freeing.