When Your Passion Returns

How my love for writing has evolved over the years

Have you ever opened an old box from the attic and found a toy you completely forgot you loved as a child? Or combed through your recipe box only to find that one amazing ginger cookie recipe you used to make all the time? It feels like nostalgia, right? But also like this wholeness, as if you’re coming home to something familiar and comfortable, something which brought you joy once and can again.

This is how I am feeling about writing.

I’ve always had writing in my blood. As a little girl I devoured books as soon as I could read, happily maxing out my library card with 20 books whenever I possibly could! I read for hours as I grew older, immersed in worlds of mystery and adventure. I started to make up stories of my own. Often they would relate to animals or something I had an interest in, like a topic from my favourite fiction series. My parents encouraged me to explore this further and when I was a pre-teen they helped me edit one of my stories into a little booklet format we printed so I could sell it for charity to my friends and family.

And then I dabbled in writing of other kinds; blogs, book reviews, short thoughts for newspapers, an article for a magazine, prayers for a teen devotional. So my love of writing evolved, as did my passion and my excitement over the years.

But then other things happened. Life didn’t always go to plan. I was suddenly in a rhythm of college and studying, working on the weekends, juggling volunteering at church with my weekly cleaning job. I had other priorities and interests, which became louder and more urgent. My writing became quieter, less often. It was one-offs of ‘ooh, I was asked to review this book…’ once or twice a year, with the occasional piece for someone else in between. And then, I stopped needing to be creative. I was only writing facts, how I’d rate a book or what I needed to recap for my music essay.

Slowly, but surely, it became less of who I was and more of a past achievement.

I still dabbled in writing, because I am still me and I always find ways to write a little - even if it’s in a journal once a year, or logging the recent book I read in my book journal. But it became a side note. A thing I wasn’t known for anymore. I wasn’t the writer in the family, like I once might have become. I was simply someone who occasionally wrote things. Who helped edit other people’s work, or proofread their manuscripts if they needed a second pair of eyes.

Of course along this journey I got married, and that in itself didn’t stop me from writing; arguably it should’ve helped because I had more to write about now my life was taking on a new path. My husband even bought me a writer’s toolbox of ways to get the creativity flowing for my birthday that first year we were together. And then my boys came along. We moved multiple times in a few years, I became busy with breastfeeding and baby classes, and my focus shifted to the little person who became the centre of every day.

I could still have written. Why didn’t I?

I ask myself this a lot now. I could have made the time, but I didn’t. I am far busier now with two very energetic boys than I ever was with one little baby. I have more to juggle and less uninterrupted time than I had when I first got married. Yet back then I didn’t write.

I don’t have an answer to my why. I simply cannot put it down to one sole thing. It was many little things, I think, which added up over the years, and then when I did have any time I didn’t know what to write anymore. My husband has still every so often said to me, “You could write about that…” or asked me why I don’t try to write a book on a specific topic he knows I already love to read about. And again, I haven’t had a good answer for him. “I just don’t feel like it” sounds so stupid and lazy, but it’s the truth. I just didn’t want to write.

Even these past few months on Substack, I’ve not been filled with the passion I used to have for writing as a teenager. I have enjoyed it, sure, and I have found it relaxing and even therapeutic at times. Perhaps it is exactly what I needed to ease me back into writing… something which wasn't urgent, it didn’t expect too much of me, but just an open space to share my thoughts and test the waters of my creativity again.

And so that leads me to today.

Today I am surprised. Surprised because about ten days ago I picked up my phone and I started to write. Not for Substack, not for a newspaper thought-piece that is due, not even for anyone else to see yet. I wrote because an idea came to me and I liked it. Liked it more than any that had crossed my mind in a long time. I just wrote, and wrote, and wrote. It became fervent, almost unstoppable, like I had to keep going to get it all out before I lost my thought. It was as if my inner doubt was scared that if I stopped writing it would all fade into the background again.

It has been years, if I had to guess I would say maybe seven, since I have written any fiction. And this past week, it has felt like I was coming home.

That boxed up toy from the attic you carried everywhere as a child, that recipe you loved so much you made it every weekend as a teenager; that is the feeling I had when I started writing - creating a story - again.

I am terrified to even type this post.

Not because I don’t want you to know this - I do, I want you to feel the same way about whatever it is you have cared about but lost your passion for recently. I am scared because saying it all aloud feels real. I don’t know if I will make it to the end, if I will finish this tale how I want to, and that is scary right now. I don’t know if my thoughts, my spark, the characters forming in my mind as they evolve on the page - whether they will fade, or become boring to me, or just lose their excitement.

I know that I don’t want to quit. I don’t want to be a writer who could’ve done something special, who had the chance to write a tale she loved but couldn’t make it into a reality.

So this is my honesty, that I am a writer. A writer who lost her passion, almost all of it, and for many years seemed to just get by. And now, it is as if the lid has been pried open just enough for light to soar in and I can see again! I can see just enough of a glimmer of that excitement, now the ideas are creeping back in, the passion is reigniting in my soul.

I write this post for those who have lost their passion. Sometimes we have to let it go for a while so we can do other things, be someone else for a time if needed. But don’t push it down, don’t hide that creativity away if it is begging to be let out.

Write! Draw! Sing! Remember how it felt to be passionate about what you were doing? How you were creating? Let that memory fill you up and push you forward again. Reignite that passion you have left to get dusty in the attic for far too long.

Then come back and tell me what you found - is it just as enthralling as you remembered it to be?