"Who cares how long it lasts?"

Earlier this year, I started to spend more time writing and illustrating. Even though I wanted to, almost desperately, share my words and illustrations with you, worry took the floor.

“What if I don’t like this in a few weeks?”

“What if I can’t be consistent?”

“What if, soon, I am no longer interested?”

Insecurity had her concerns too.

“What will people say?”

“So what's your goal?”

“You can’t make a career out of this.”

“Are these hobbies?” (SN: I do not like hobby conversations. I feel like the idea of hobbies has been deemed a sort of societal must have. Like "we need hobbies and we need to take them seriously." Idk.)

I’ve digressed.

Western society places high value on things that last a long time.

20 year careers.

25 year marriages.

Lifelong pursuits.

And at some point, this, too, was a value I took on.

I took pride in working in television for 13 years. I envied people who’d known what they wanted to do all their lives. (They felt more destined for "success" than I.) I valued the 14 year friendship I had with my former best friend even though I felt nearly invisible for half that time.

However, having length and duration as a value became a barricade to the courage I needed to follow my desires. It was the fence hindering my inner child from leaving the front yard to go explore.

It was those questions.

“What if I don’t like this in a few weeks?”

“What if I can’t be consistent?”

“What if, soon, I am no longer interested?”

I didn’t have the answer to them.

I didn’t know how long it would last.

I didn’t know if I could be consistent. (Consistency was another value of mine.)

Facing grief encouraged me to remove duration, longevity and consistency from their pedestals.

In time, I've become much more interested in being the ebbs and flows I contain. In being who life calls me to be in each moment.

In becoming whoever I want to whenever I want to.

There is no way to determine how long this chapter will be. So I choose to be with each word, with sentence, each page.