Where Would I Be If I Had Known?

Stop for a moment.

Where would my life be if I had known, truly known, that I held this much desire to write? What might I have worked on if I had realized earlier that this is where I would end up. Compelled to share my thoughts, ideas, opinions, and stories?

It’s easy to feel the weight of lost time. To look back and tally the hours I might have spent writing instead of wandering, unsure. To imagine all that I could have created.

But stop again.

That can’t be where my focus lives.

I had to live my life the way I did. I had to stumble through those years, collecting the very experiences that now give weight to my voice. Without all that living, messy, uncertain, and beautiful. I wouldn’t have discovered that writing is the right thing for me. Not then, but now.

Now, I have a landfill’s worth of thoughts and ideas, buried but still alive. Memories and insights composted by time, ready to nourish something new. I’ve seen a lot. I’ve heard even more. Forty-four years of life. A solid foundation, not a missed opportunity, it’s been just a third of life.

And that is what provides that spark to begin. To write and see where the words take me. Not from a place of regret, but from a place of readiness. Endless possibilities wait and not just in what I write about, but in how I write, how I process, how I create.

I’m not late to this. I’m right on time.