I Came for the Writing.

I left with community.

Have you ever felt perpetually behind in life?

I have and it’s the only feeling I’ve ever known.

I am completely aware that comparing oneself to the Jones’ is an entirely futile exercise designed only to make you feel bad for what you haven't done or haven’t acquired. What about when it’s not just the Jones’, but the Zamoras, the Wongs, and everyone else? The challenge of staying resilient becomes a monumental everyday practice of self-forgiveness.

Then came that day in mid-March 2020, when the first shelter-in-place orders were issued.

From the moment the order came down, I knew our world was forever changed. I was going to surf this wave of change and adapt faster than I ever have before. This was my time… To catch up.

Since then, I’ve taken four live cohorts, online classes with communities made and set up just for the duration of that course.

Four.

I fully took advantage of my time during lockdown to not only level up myself, but to indulge in my curiosities and hunger for new knowledge.

I studied four different topics: storytelling for filmmaking, running a creative business, a note-taking information management course, and lastly, a writing course.

That’s right, the thing I’m doing right now. The words you’re reading would not exist at all if I hadn’t put myself through this, “write,” of passage.

No longer do I feel so behind. In fact, I feel as though the acquired skills are like a rocket engine taken from a defunct Concorde and strapped to my back. It’s fueled by all the words edited out that you didn’t get to read.

Who exactly is editing those words?

You see, the skills I’ve learned along the way were desperately wanted by me, but they are nothing without the fuel.

The fuel is what I needed.

That came in the form of community. The like-minded brains of other cohort’ists all seeking to acquire a higher skill than they had before. These fellow brains freed me from the cage of intellectual isolation I had been unknowingly suffering from for such a long time.

At last... I have found my tribe.

Fellow surfers riding for their own reasons, but all of us having a shared joy and respect for having found each other.

We care. We value. We write.