There’s a wetland marsh I like to visit when I’m out for a run that serves two pressing needs: the first is to give my legs a little rest halfway through the jog so I don’t fall on my face, and the second is to do a quick round of birdwatching. It’s a win-win. I am squarely in my middle-age years now, and I can’t always fight these natural inclinations of the aging body. Somewhere in our DNA it says that once we pass our forties, we suddenly have an incredible urge to not only take lots of breaks, but also to observe and identify everything we see in the sky. Who am I to fight these laws of nature? Actually, I quite love it.
On these little pitstops I’ve gotten to see a variety of birds: goldfinches, sparrows, hawks, ducks, and even a green heron once, which I found particularly exciting. I had seen one of them before in Florida and I couldn’t believe it when I found one here in New Hampshire. I thought I must be seeing things. Or it was lost. But when I got home that day, I did a little online research, and sure enough, green herons do in fact migrate to New Hampshire. Who knew?
The green heron was a one-time thing, though. What I usually see now, fluttering about the tall grass, cattails and speckled alder, is the red-winged blackbird. In fact, it’s pretty much all I see. I might see some hawks and ducks in the distance, now and again, but closer to the viewing platform next to the marsh, the rest of the small bird families have been boxed out. The red-wings have fully claimed the territory.
This process has taken years. Ten years ago, a red-winged blackbird would have been a rare sighting in this spot, but a few years ago, their numbers notably started increasing. They were mixed in among the cowbirds, grackles, and phoebes, but they were definitely on the rise. Now they are the lords of this little spot in the wild, and the challenge is not to find one of them, but to see if there are any other birds that are allowed to enter their space. I watched with admiration the other day as several of the blackbirds caught an exorbitant number of damselflies in their beaks and continued to hunt for more. The place was theirs and they knew it.
And it got me thinking.
I’ve been writing for a while now. A few years, pretty consistently. But at times my process gets interrupted by regular life and I haven’t always felt like I can lay claim to being a writer yet. When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them that I still work in real estate development, which is true, but that I’m also “trying” to become a writer. Why do I do that? If someone plays soccer every day, they call themselves a soccer player, don’t they? Is there some invisible line that says if I don’t make a lot of money doing something yet, I can’t say that I’m doing it?
Maybe like the red-winged blackbird who repeatedly laid claim to this marsh until it became theirs, that’s what I need to start doing with my craft. When someone asks what I do, maybe I need to start saying, “I’m a writer,” and leave it at that.
To be totally honest, there’s a part of me that feels like I need a second book published before I can claim the station of writer, but I’m starting to lose patience with that premise. I’m in the middle of second revisions now, and I know the book will be finished soon. I’m really excited about it and I believe in the work, so hopefully others will too. I think they will. But why should I have to wait until I’ve written it until I can claim I’m a writer? The writing has begun! I’m a writer, damnit! And I think it’s about time I started acting like one.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to get tweed jackets with elbow patches, and start smoking a pipe, but at least when someone asks, I’m going to confess my primary activity. Because that’s not just who I want to be anymore. It’s what I am.
“Decide what to be and go be it.”
– The Avett Brothers, Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise
