If you were to ask me when I discovered my passion for writing, I’d tell you about the earliest memories I had. When I was five, I stored what seemed like hundreds of tattered notebooks underneath my bed; it was my own secret stash that I wasn’t ready to showcase. Every page was covered in ink—stories told about everything little boys found interesting from superheroes to murder mysteries.

At that time, my imagination felt endless, almost godlike—confidently, I created entire universes on paper.

When asked the question of what I aspired to be when I grew up, I imagined myself in space. The moon morphed into a throne, and a galaxy of the brightest stars circled around my head, forming a halo. I’d visualize the darkness of space to be a blank canvas where I could construct and design worlds and bring them to life. The power I felt made me feel safe, as if nothing could hurt me and everything was under my control.

Or maybe this childlike wonder only bred arrogance. As I got older, the burdens of my responsibilities made me realistic about my future and how I would support myself financially as a writer. Could I make a career out of it?

By eighteen, I understood that with age comes limitations and not the freedoms I once believed existed as an adult. It was when writing could no longer be a passion but had to be a profession or a hobby or a side hustle. As making money became a hindrance, I was told writing would be a distraction and that it wouldn’t give me a bright future but a bleak one, or a future as dark as a galaxy devoid of stars. My imagination had felt useless, almost nonexistent—I felt as if I was carrying the world on my shoulders.

To be a writer is a stressful job; the writing field is immensely challenging and tremendously competitive. Whether if it’s through blogging or publishing, it’s time-consuming just to obtain a steady income and to be taken seriously in the field. Even though I’ve published my first book and received two college degrees in English, I still struggle with finding a place where I can flourish and cultivate a following for my work.  

However, even as I got older, when I thought about what I aspired to be, I still imagined myself in space. Shadows coiled around the moon like a snake while galaxies of shimmering stars became colonized by alien invaders and other people—an escalating war waged throughout the solar system. I regarded the darkness of space as its own universe; but, it no longer belonged to me.

The loss I felt was powerful, as if this control I thought I had was as illusory as my imagination.

Now that I’m twenty-five, I’m still enamored with writing but for a different reason. Instead of using my imagination as an escape from reality, I find the best stories to tell come from embracing the real world. I find stories in everyday life, whether in the realm of politics or the social issues plaguing our society today. Even in myself and my own experiences, there’s a vast array of topics to expound upon that other people can find relatable and engaging—as if the universe was an open book of empty pages eager to be discovered.

And still, I struggle to build a career through writing, even though I have internships, write and edit the occasional article for online websites, and try to acquire a social media following. Sometimes, this frustration feels overpowering, as if I’m becoming a victim of my own passion that could lead to self-destruction or initiate an apocalypse to the world I created.

As I continue to ask myself what I aspire to be, I look at my surroundings—heaps of clothes piled in a corner and blankets entangled over my bed mattress, which is where I sit facing a blank document on a laptop screen—and I remember why I love writing. How powerful it feels to see beauty in things no one cares to notice, and how important it is to unveil that beauty in a way that forces people to feel as if they discovered something new for themselves.

Writing puts things into perspective. In a humbling way, it lets you see things the way they should be seen.

As I peek outside my bedroom window, I see there are no stars in the sky, and likewise, there are no thoughts in my head worth writing about at the moment. But the sky is smothered in gloom, compelling the moon to shine brighter—its light blankets me in an aura that gives me the much-needed inspiration to keep writing.