My Zero Moment

The moment I decided I wanted to be a writer happened by accident two years ago when people responded to my blog from Spain. It was my zero moment. For four years, an audience was building as I wrote about the work we accomplished in Kenya. When I wrote from Spain, my stories morphed into funny insights or miserable mishaps stumbling along the Camino de Santiago, an ancient 500-mile path. Raw emotions skidded into the posts, my voice emerged, and the positive feedback startled me. I had asked my readers to join me on my journey, and there they were.

When the hike was over I stopped the blog. The issues I had run from when I left for Spain jumped back in my lap when I returned home. When the steam train halts at the depot there is a moment when a long shhhhhhhhhhhh erupts from the engine. I needed two years of shhhhhhhhhh time.

Slowly, I’m returning. My writing is beginning to creep out of its hiding place. I’ve enrolled in writing courses, and I’m reading myriad books on the craft. I slip posts onto an online site I don’t promote. I’m getting more comfortable with exposing myself.

I want to write. I want to be a writer. I want to bring to life all the tens of thousands of pages I have written since I was 12-years-old before I knew anything about a zero moment.

My time will come.