"I write, therefore I am." - Mentorship Entry #1

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Staring at the screen, he didn't know how to start.

The cursor flickered, mocking him.

It's always like this, he thought to himself. I know exactly what is going to happen. I'll eventually start with something I think is super-original. I'll get into it. Finish "Chapter 1" with ideas for the rest of the book racing around in my mind, faster than I can remember them as I'm jotting each one down. And then - I won't look at it again for weeks, with other things getting in the way. Work. Art. Life.

It didn't matter that this wasn't a book. It was writing. It would follow the same pattern, which is why he almost didn't even begin. The Steemit user @michelle.gent had tagged him only because he'd commented on her previous post - not because he'd shown any particular interest. He could have just ignored it, and written his usual Thursday post about something controversial (it would have been about drugs this week).

Almost... But no - there he sat, writing because the spark had never died, though it had been spluttering for years. Hope yet.

She's offering a mentorship. Do it, Jody. Just do it.

As he wrote, he thought about the task assigned: "Write your introduction to the group. Who you are, what you've done, what you'd like to achieve from this."

Questions not so easily answered. He knew that he had never been able to easily define who he was - he'd thought about it for years... "Jody Vaughn Lawrence" was just a name, a label. Was he just his body? His thoughts? His actions? The best answer he'd come up with was "a mixture of all of these". He certainly didn't believe in souls.

"What have you done" was easier... So many things. He stopped to think about not only all the things that had brought him to where he was at that very moment, but also how he would never get to know - truly know - the experiences of other people. Paradigms that would forever go undiscovered by him. As often happened when he thought about this, he felt trapped. Trapped into existing in only one way, one format. This Jody-body and Jody-mind, with no choice in the matter.

This contrasted suddenly with his other great angst, being that he felt like there were just too many things that one could want to do in the world, and that he certainly did want to do, that made his allotted lifespan seem unbearably short. He would gladly live as "Jody" for hundreds, even thousands, of years!

Two paragraphs later and he still hadn't really answered the second question... What had he done?

So many things and yet, really, he felt, not much... After an interesting but mostly average childhood, he had not known what he wanted to do with his life until in 2010, he followed his heart to Brazil. He began a career in teaching English, and started creating what he called "digital paintings" with fractals. He had always had a creative streak, or so he liked to think, and had kept many blogs and journals through the years. But unlike all his other endeavours, the art stuck. He didn't become bored with it, and when looking back at older work, he didn't hate it. It became a full-time hobby.

As for the third question, he truly wasn't sure.

His love-hate relationship with writing wasn't going away any time soon, so perhaps he thought this mentorship might kindle more of the love-side of it. Perhaps this @michelle.gent person could guide him through a shrubland that he had never been able to successfully traverse by himself.

He dared to hope so.