It's Not Too Late

And don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise.

Photo by Jack Anstey on Unsplash

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes we have to contend with a past version of ourselves in order to understand who we are right now. So I must ask: Who was I ten years ago?

Ten years ago, I was in my mid-twenties. I was living in a different house, in a different state. I’d finished grad school and didn’t know how I felt about it. I was in love. I adored my three kittens. I was sick all the time but didn’t really know it. I’d only just started writing again after a multi-year hiatus. A hiatus I’m still trying to understand.

Due to that re-emergence as I writer, I had also started racking up awards and publications again. You know, the thing that I did to prove to everyone else that I was actually a writer. And little did I know, but I was accomplishing something I desperately wanted in the writing world. 

However, it didn’t occur to me that I might have actually done a Thing to be proud of for myself. A thing to fulfill a life dream. That I had actually met a target that was for me, and only me.

It didn’t occur to me for ten years. More than. Even as I said to myself a month ago “Hmm, we need to keep working towards this Thing.” But then I went to go look at what would qualify me for The Thing, and uh, the work had already been done. A decade ago.

You see, apparently I met the requirements to become an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association like a bazillion years ago. All I needed to do was dig out some old publication contracts, fill out a form, and pay the dues. Bing. Bang. Boom. 

So it’s done. This week I did The Thing. I joined a professional writer’s association, and it was stupidly easy. Embarrassingly so. 

Part of me feels a little sad about it. I wish that version of me knew what she had accomplished. I wish she had known, and could have felt that boost in her confidence. What would she—and therefore I—have done differently knowing then that this was the genre for us? What could she—and therefore I—have done with the various support the guild offers? 

But I’m not letting myself wallow in all that could have, would have, should have despair. Because late is better than never. Late is better than never. And while I’m showing up to this party based on contracts signed before 2014, I’m still showing up to the party. For that, I can be proud.

Because there’s a lot of little wounds in my writer heart. Wounds that have been keeping me from stepping back into the spotlight. Wounds that have been whispering little lies into my psyche. While I started processing these things in 2019, and the pandemic gave me some time for deep healing of old wounds, I’m still working through some of them. My resistance to getting any help is starting to soften. My need to deny myself of doing things the easier way is starting to be seen for the bullshit it is. Like, damn dude, use your resources!

Even as my family works on opening old wounds, I can at least see them for what they are now. It’s okay that I want them to be excited for me. And it’s okay for me to be sad when their response to all of this was just “oh, well, at least you got it sorted out.” I don’t need to be beholden to their lack of enthusiasm, their lack of acknowledgement. Just because they don’t see me as a writer worth celebrating doesn’t mean that I’m not.

It’s not too late for me to walk down this road. It’s not too late for me to show up to the party. I am being what’s called fashionably late, darling. The champagne tastes just the same.

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Dispatch Notes

Location: Boulder, CO
Listening: Pretty Lavinia by American Murder Song
Reading: Anatomy of a Breakthrough by Adam Alter
Pondering: Good Reads has no Incentive to be Good via Counter Craft