Voyaging

Emily Apuzzo Hopkins | March 18, 2020

In late December I embarked on a project. 

At the time this project felt incredibly selfish. The project felt luxurious. It felt as if it was not a necessity. The project? To create something that is wholly mine through writing.

Now, that is arguably not the full story, but that is where my story begins.

For the past decade-plus, I have been sitting on a book idea. A simple board book intended for babies and their caregivers. I recited parts of the book during my job as a nanny, played around with sections of the book in my career as a teacher, and lovingly in my current role as mommy. For YEARS, this idea took shape in my brain and was expressed in various ways depending on the aforementioned audiences. The little kernel of an idea was always the same.

Finally - and I still can’t put my finger on why - it had to be written down. It was begging me to pay attention. So I did.

I started to write. But what I found was that it wasn’t just this book that wanted to be written… it was a whole slew of books and blog posts that were ready to take me on a journey. And I had been ignoring all of them.

Don’t get me wrong, there were clues. I started to find that I enjoyed the writing parts of my work. Writing proposals for things just because was a good indicator... Editing for fun… 

These clues were a far cry from the high school kid who loathed a five-paragraph essay or the grad student who nearly had an anxiety attack finishing a 20-page paper. But that was writing for someone else.

I wanted to write for me.

Since I have left the port, my voyage has been far more interesting than I would have imagined. To date, I have completed the first drafts of two children’s books and started another two; posted nine blogs (soon to be ten) with another eight waiting in the wings; and created a website for these ideas to live and take shape. And now the scary part… sharing these writings with others.

I did start this project with the intention in mind that my writings would be read by someone other than me eventually. But it was a part of the journey that I had always assumed to be the destination… not part of the journey itself. As I was talking through this fear that I did not even know existed, I realized I was sinking my own ship. By not sharing what I was writing with more people, I was sabotaging my own dreams. Fear can do that.

So here is my writing. Here is my website. Thank you for coming. Thank you for thinking that this blog post was worth the three minutes it took to read. You could have chosen anything to do for three minutes and you chose this, so thank you. I hope to continue to write more things that you find to be worth reading. I hope that if I write something you do not like or do not agree with that you will come back again anyway and read something else because maybe, just maybe, that something else will speak to you. I hope that if you find something particularly compelling that you share it with others. I hope that one day when my books get published that you will buy them and share them with those that you love. 

I have so many hopes for my writing, so thank you for joining me on this journey.