Well, that’s a weird thing to start with, I imagine I hear you thinking. I thought she said she gave practical advice about living the life I’ve always imagined. What the heck is this foo-foo crap about giving yourself permission? Of COURSE I give myself permission!

So you say, dreamer, but if that’s true, why haven’t you started living your dream before now? What’s been stopping you?

Instead of trying to guess, I’ll just tell you what stopped me:

I’ll never make any money doing {insert pretty much anything here}

I don’t have time to work on my dream

I have other responsibilities that I need to take care of that take priority.

It’s just such an overwhelming process. Where do I even start?

What I want is selfish

It’s egotistical to want to create something and want other people to see it.

I’m not good enough. I have to be good at what I want to do before I can do it.

I had to start calling myself a writer before I actually believed I was one, and I only started to really believe I was a writer after I was willing to start saying it out loud. It didn’t matter that other people had been telling me I was a writer for years. I didn’t know it. I didn’t know that I needed my own permission to be a writer before anyone else would take me seriously. I also didn’t know that I could start calling myself a writer before I actually felt like one, so in reality I felt like a big fat fraud telling people I was a writer before I had anything published.

There were a lot of road blocks that I put up between me and my writing. No one makes money as a writer anymore, I thought. I’m not good enough yet to actually quit a job to become a writer. I should be focusing on making money. I should be spending more time with people instead of holed up on some island/in a remote river valley/in a foreign country, hunched over my laptop. Just who the hell do I think I am?

Now I know I’m a writer, regardless of whether I write every day, and regardless of whether I write anything that anyone else will ever see. I am writer because I am: because writing makes me feel alive. When I am enjoying a moment, I think about how I would describe it in words. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I turn to my writing to calm me down and make me feel better. When I love someone, I write to them so they know. I have made money writing, but I don’t have to make money writing to call myself a writer. I don’t have to prove my writerly status to  anyone – except myself.

I’m a writer. And I’m only a writer because I finally gave myself permission to be a writer.

What do YOU need to give yourself permission to do?