I was on one of my walks when I had an incredibly profound realization.
What would a writer do?
Well.
She would write.
Obviously.
That’s it.
That was the revelation.
Very deep stuff happening over here.
But for some reason, it hit me.
Because I had wanted to become a writer for a long time.
I wanted to grow Chaos & Carrots.
I wanted to write consistently.
I wanted this to become something real.
And then I would go weeks without posting anything.
I think part of me was waiting for something to change first.
Maybe I needed to feel more like a writer.
Maybe I needed to feel inspired.
Maybe I needed to believe I was good enough.
Maybe I needed to somehow become the version of myself who writes consistently…
before I could write consistently.
Which, now that I type that out, presents a slight logistical problem.
So I started thinking about it differently.
What does a writer actually do?
She writes.
Okay.
I can do that.
I started writing a little bit every day.
Not finishing a blog post every day.
Not sitting down for some impressive three-hour writing session.
Just writing.
Then I started paying attention to myself.
When do I actually want to write?
When does it come most naturally?
And I realized it’s in the morning.
I meditate.
I spend some time focusing on gratitude.
And by then, my brain usually feels a little quieter.
And that’s when I want to write.
I also realized I love writing outside.
Something about being outside gives me clarity.
So instead of deciding that becoming a writer meant I needed to develop an extraordinary amount of discipline and force myself to write under any circumstances, I started creating the circumstances where writing comes naturally to me.
Meditate.
Gratitude.
Go outside.
Write.
Then I go for my walks.
And now that I’m writing more, something else happens on those walks.
I notice things.
An idea comes to me.
Something that happened with my kids suddenly feels like something I want to write about.
I start thinking about something weird I’ve been doing with food or shame or gratitude or my brain.
I notice a thought I’ve had 700 times before, except this time I actually notice it.
And I think:
Oh.
I want to write about that.
Then I write again.
And there’s this certain momentum that happens.
The more I write, the more I think about writing.
The more I think about writing, the more ideas I notice.
The more ideas I notice, the more I want to write.
The more I work on Chaos & Carrots, the more real Chaos & Carrots feels.
And because it feels more real, I want to work on it more.
It’s this weird little loop.
And somewhere in that loop, something changed.
I stopped spending so much time wondering if I was a writer.
I was writing.
So…
I was a writer.
Apparently the paperwork was much simpler than I thought.
And I’ve been thinking about that.
Because I recently read something about taking the action before your thoughts and feelings catch up.
I don’t remember the exact wording, but the idea stuck with me.
We tend to think change is supposed to happen from the inside out.
First I become confident.
Then I do the scary thing.
First I become motivated.
Then I exercise.
First I believe I’m good enough.
Then I put my work out into the world.
First I feel like a writer.
Then I write.
But I’m starting to realize that sometimes becoming happens in the opposite direction.
Sometimes it happens from the outside in.
You take the action first.
And then your internal world starts catching up with the fact that you’re actually doing it.
Because I didn’t sit around thinking:
I am a writer.
I am a writer.
I AM A WRITER.
until I finally believed myself enough to open my laptop.
I just started writing.
And then I did it again.
And again.
Eventually I had all this actual evidence.
I write almost every day.
I notice things I want to write about.
I get ideas on my walks.
I work on my blog.
I care about sentences.
I get excited when I figure out what I’m actually trying to say.
At some point, calling myself a writer stopped feeling like something I was trying to become and started feeling like a description of what I was already doing.
And I think that’s the part I was missing.
I thought I needed to change the stories my brain was telling me first.
I’m not really a writer.
I’m not good enough.
I’m not the kind of person who does this consistently.
But maybe I didn’t need to convince myself otherwise first.
Those stories could still be there.
I could write anyway.
Because it’s a lot harder for my brain to tell me I’m not a writer when I keep writing.
Not impossible, obviously.
My brain enjoys a challenge.
But now I have evidence.
And I don’t think that’s “fake it till you make it.”
I’m not walking around in a beret telling strangers about my manuscript.
I’m just doing something I genuinely want to do without waiting for my thoughts and feelings to grant me permission first.
But there’s another piece of this that feels important.
I didn’t just tell myself:
Writers write. Now force yourself to write every day forever.
I started learning myself.
I learned that mornings work better for me.
I learned that meditation helps.
Gratitude helps.
Being outside helps.
Walking helps.
I started building my days in a way that makes writing easier.
And maybe that’s part of becoming too.
Not endlessly forcing yourself to behave like some imaginary better version of you.
Maybe it’s asking:
What would she actually do?
And then:
What would make doing that feel natural?
Because I don’t want to spend my life dragging myself toward the person I want to be.
I’d rather create a life where I keep accidentally meeting her.
Maybe she writes in the morning because that’s when her mind feels clear.
Maybe she goes outside because that’s where ideas come.
Maybe she walks because that’s when she seems to notice things she wants to write about.
Maybe becoming her isn’t one giant transformation.
Maybe it’s a bunch of very ordinary Tuesdays where I keep doing the things she would do.
And eventually there’s less distance between us.
I thought I had to figure out how to feel like a writer.
I didn’t.
I needed to write.
So I did.
