We are all shaped by our life experiences, our environment, and our upbringings, and amid all that, we learn how to respond, adapt, and fine-tune who we are as we (hopefully) grow and mature into responsible adults.
Positive experiences are easy to handle. They don't require any second-guessing, they don't prompt endless "what ifs," they don't have you questioning "where did I go wrong?" and they certainly don't lend themselves to you looking in the mirror and feeling like you've failed and failed badly.
We've all had run-of-the-mill negative experiences that don't take us long to get over. It takes a few minutes or maybe 24 hours to lick our wounds, but then we move on. But no matter how old we get, there are also the ones that throw us for complete loops, that test our mettle and our faith, that leave us devastated and unsure what the way forward is.
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I've been writing since I was a pre-teen. Back then, it was creative writing that I gravitated towards; the political stuff would come much later.
Writing has always been a form of escape for me. Even when I've written about serious issues, like the Nancy Guthrie case, for example, I was still doing what I loved to do.
But back when I was a sophomore in high school, I became friends with a group of junior and senior students. One of the senior fellows took an interest in me, and me him. It didn't take long before we started talking about taking the next step beyond friendship. Because I was so wrapped up in the "love" experience, my writing fell by the wayside.
My confidence level in high school was next to zero, so I couldn't believe my good fortune that I had landed what I considered a catch. But a few weeks into the dating experience, things went south when I began to get criticized for nearly everything I said. Things were read into what I would say that weren't there, and when I tried to right a "wrong" that wasn't really wrong to begin with, it just made the criticisms flung at me more hurtful.
It got to the point where even I was beginning to question everything I said to the extent that I would agonize over what to say before I uttered the words, in hopes that it would land right with the other person.
Needless to say, that was no way to live my life. So I ended up doing two things: walking away from the relationship, and getting back to my writing, where the only judge and jury was me, since no one else would see it.
During that time, I got much better at my creative writing, to the point I felt confident enough to send short-form submissions to the school newspaper, which were sometimes accepted and published. When all was said and done in the battle of who got ultimate control over what I would say and how I would say it, I felt like I'd won.
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I had channeled a very negative chapter in my life into a positive one that paid dividends when it came to my self-esteem and willingness to shoot for my dreams.
Fast forward to early 2019, and after working the same administrative job for nearly 18 years, I was laid off. Though I had seen the writing on the wall for some time, it was still hard to take - and terrifying. I was living on my own and had never in my adult life been jobless. Plus, it had been 18 years since I'd had to be on the hunt for a place to work.
What would the future hold for me?
Some 24 hours later, after I'd had time to process and pray about everything, I decided I was going to pursue my lifelong dream of a writing career. I put out feelers to friends and acquaintances I'd made during my blogging and part-time freelancing years, and within a couple of days, I had landed three writing gigs, with one of them being RedState.
And I'm blessed beyond measure to still be with all of them today.
There is much truth in the old saying about "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," but I'll be the first to admit that turning a negative into a positive is not always easy. There have been instances in my life when I was unable to do so. But I'm pleased to say that when it came to internal questions about my self-worth as a human being and who I was as a writer, lemons were turned into lemonade over time, and I couldn't be any happier with how that turned out.
I'm very much interested in the experiences of others in this regard. If you feel comfortable enough doing so, please share them in the comments.
