Aspiring

The hopeful author sat down to go through his notes, through his journals, through a few personal websites to see if there was anything worth running with, anything likely to tag the notice of a potential publisher. Over the years, his writing had been undisciplined, unacclaimed, and largely unpursued as a viable career path. From the first doodles and devotional thoughts in small, spiralbound notebooks from the eighties, to the updated and upgraded possibilities of blogs and online journals, he knew that the only person really impressed was himself, and that if anyone else enjoyed it... well, they're probably just as scatter-brained and undisciplined as he was. But at the suggestion that he write a book or publish some of his work, he was intrigued enough to at least sift through the years, looking back at life as it had been penned.

He'd been writing off and on for over twenty years - mostly on, rarely away from a pen and paper or from a keyboard for a month or two over that time. He'd documented screwy high school dilemmas, difficult tests and papers in college, trials and tribulations growing up in the church, and his own thoughts on living life and growing in Christ. Looking back at it all now, some of it honestly stood out as very mature for someone who didn't have a clue; but most of it was still drivel, still clueless, still pompous and sarcastic. He tried to recall what was going on in "real life" as he'd written many of these words - what party had gone wrong, what job had gone right, what test had been failed, what life had been wasted, what was God saying then and there?

Blank pages or a blank screen - whatever was going on in life had been a writing prompt, with a few writer's blocks thrown in for good measure. Right now, though, it seemed to be all bottled up, locked up and unable to move forward for its own weightiness and carelessness. How much time had been wasted writing down life, instead of living it? How much life had been lived that was, as a consequence of not paying attention and doing it right, in the end unworthy of being memorialized? He couldn't shake the thought that his best years, and subsequently his best writing, might never have materialized for a lack of understanding the full weight and risk of a life lived well.

He was hopeful, but realistic, too - knowing that quantity didn't equate to quality, and only the one living the life written down faithfully for so many years would be able to add to its chapters anything ultimately redemptive and inspiring. As he paged through his writing, flipping through the chapters on so many college-ruled pieces of paper - he thanked God that there was still more paper, still more to be written, still more ink in the pens and space on the websites to make something worthwhile. If anyone else wanted to read - they would enter the process at their own risk, no promises from the aspiring author.