I can’t really believe I’m writing this but it’s been four years since I started writing on this page. It hasn’t been that active the last two or so years since I began writing elsewhere but it’s difficult to overstate the growth I’ve had in those years.
I was genuinely so embarrassed to share that I had created this blog. I’m not even entirely sure why; I guess I was worried that I wasn’t “qualified” (whatever the hell that means) to start a blog. Admittedly, I tried to make sure every post I ever published was essay-quality instead of just…blogging and writing.
After about a year and a half with this blog and very little of what I would have called success, I decided to take on an endeavor after some time of just throwing shit at the wall and hoping something would stick. That endeavor ended up being what set me on a different path with my writing and incidentally my career and life.
I decided to do the selfishly-titled “31 Days of Tré.” I don’t think I’m a narcissist (though that’s probably what a narcissist would say). To be quite frank, I have a really damn difficult time deciding upon a name for anything. Just going with my name was the simplest route, and another valuable lesson I’ve learned is overplanning is often just an excuse to procrastinate productively. (My parents would probably then counter that with that I need to be better about planning the right amount but if Goldilocks solutions were easy then we’d all be the best planners.) That project was my way of bringing attention to cystic fibrosis for CF Awareness Month (every May). I had wanted to write extensively about CF but I always worried about being boxed in by writing exclusively about CF; my compromise was that if I placed my name in there instead of CF, I would have the latitude to write about my family, my sister who had passed away two months earlier, and other aspects of my life.
The truth is, that series was to create a three-dimensional portrayal of a grieving man with depression and anxiety and a chronic disease. That portrayal was intended to provide people a real version of me; this was not out of a misplaced sense of importance, it was out of a need to educate others about a rare disease, but let them know that they weren’t alone, either in their insecurities, their grief, or what mattered to them. I also wanted to live advice I had given others: Who gives a shit if people are judging you while you did something that was important to you? It was in my grief that I realized my sister would’ve supported my dream of becoming a writer so I may as well commit to it. If others supported, great, and if they didn’t, that’s their prerogative but others’ perception of me is not my business.
When I started this blog, it was at the turn of the year and I hoped that I’d end 2017 (isn’t it strange how years sound new when they begin but a few years later they sound archaic?) a famous writer. That clearly didn’t happen and it would take a year and a half of on-and-off writing with some posts getting less than 50 views until something panned out. The funny thing is: the “thing” that made my writing feel worth it was a spur of the moment idea not unlike the creation of this blog itself.
I’m definitely not a “successful” writer but I’ve also learned that there is no such thing as “successful.” Everybody deems success differently and we all have different goals so the fact there is no objective metric for what success is means that there’s no ultimate, written-in-the-fabric-of-the-universe definition of success anyhow.
So what came out of that “31 Days of Tré” where I simply made it a priority to write about something, anything, and publish it here for the entirety of the month of May 2018? A few months later, I secured a columnist role with Cystic Fibrosis News Today. That columnist role has a direct thread to where I am today.
I write about myself and my life because the paper is my journal. I also journal daily but sometimes, we just need a bit of solidarity. If we were trapped in one another’s minds, we likely wouldn’t feel so lonely.
The world is terrifyingly lonely but it’s also not; we are all interconnected.
If the world is going to be tough on you and make your dreams seem scary, embarrassing, or not worth it, why the hell should we not give it a try? We’re all just as scared of failing as each other. And you know the even more beautiful part? We’re all too scared and worried about ourselves that we’re not even judging others as much as we think they’re judging us!
I’m going to start blogging more, but this is going to be my stream-of-consciousness space where I also hope to provide others a space to write.
all the love in the world to you,
tré