For this post, I’m going to go back to my old style of writing. And by “old style of writing”, I mean “ranting”.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to read any of my old blog posts, I encourage you to do so. I’ve written a lot of rants in the past- rants about how the guys on American Pickers get on my nerves and probably spoon in armoires on commercial breaks and about how my kids selective hearing drives me nuts and how I wonder if mental institutions take walk ins. (Check out this perfect example of my ranting: My Nerves and What’s On Them.)

See, I used to write a lot of rants. People seemed to enjoy my rants, and writing them also made me feel better. And then I wondered if I ranted too often, and I realized that I did, so I quit ranting so much and instead focused all of my time and energy on making a name for myself in the “real” writing world and freelance writing and building a brand and attempting to publish my damn book (which has yet to be (#**((*#**#)* published!)

But I miss writing rants. I think I was much healthier, mentally, when I ranted on my blog two or three times a week. I know I was.

But I’m too busy writing to rant anymore. Does that make sense? No? Well, stick around and let me school you.

See, writing has become my business. I hate to complain about that. I really do. I’ve always wanted to be paid for my words, and now I am. It’s literally a dream come true. I’m not complaining. I’m really not.

Well, I am, but I hate myself for it.

But all of this writing for money isn’t fun for me. My favorite kind of writing is freestyle. Rants. Blog posts that have no rhyme or reason. That kind of writing comes easy to me. This kind of writing comes easy to me. I thoroughly enjoy sitting down at my computer and typing the asinine things that live in my head. The shitty thing is that I don’t get paid to do that.

Freelance writing is taking up all of my time and it is sucking me dry. It’s sucking the creativity right out of me. It’s like I’m hooked up to a Shop Vac. Or leeches. Or the anemic guy on Twilight. I’m being sucked dry. SUCKED.

You’d think all of this writing would help hone my craft, and maybe it is, maybe it is making me a better writer, but it just isn’t enjoyable. It’s too much like a job and less like a stress-reliever. It’s hard, yo. I don’t like hard. I once quit a job on an assembly line while I was in college because my supervisor asked me to physically move some pallets. I quit the next day. Because it was hard. And because I got a hemorrhoid.

I know hard work pays off. I know nothing good comes easy. I know book deals don’t come to those who solely rant on a blog. I know hard work is necessary. I have worked hard in my life. I didn’t stick around to move pallets for a guy with pit stains, but I’ve clocked in at 7 am and out at 7pm. I’ve raised children. I’ve housebroken puppies. All of that shit was hard, but I did it.

But my passion- writing- shouldn’t be hard. It’s the one thing in my life that shouldn’t be hard. It should be enjoyable for me, the way it once was.

Say I’m given an assignment on rocking chairs. “Susannah, we need you to write 750 words on rocking chairs. Make it humorous. There’s 50 bones in it for you.”

It’s hard to write 750 humorous words about a damn rocking chair.

“Rocking chairs are chairs that rock. I don’t know what else to say. My editor will hate this, and now I’m nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of aforementioned rocking chairs.”

Gosh, it sucks. Writing about shit I don’t want to write about sucks.

But I do it. I write 750 words of bullshit about rocking chairs, I collect my 50 bucks and I spend it on essential oils that promise to take away my anxiety about writing 750 words of bullshit every day.

I thought about giving it all up today. I thought, several times, “I’m done writing. I don’t want to do it anymore. It’s not fun anymore. It’s hard. This shit is hard. I don’t care if my book ever gets published. It’s too hard. I can’t compete with these other writers. I’ll never make it on the New York Bestsellers’ List, and I really don’t care anymore, because it’s too hard. I’m done. I don’t want anymore deadlines. I don’t want to write 750 damn words about mosquito bites or organic corn flakes or other bullshit. I don’t want to obsess about articles and page views and going viral. I don’t want to write anymore. I’m done. I’m done. I’m done. That’s it, I’m really seriously done.”

And I threw my laptop in a drawer and left my house. I drove to an appointment and went to the grocery store and listened to my radio as loud as I wanted, even songs with explicit lyrics because my kids weren’t in the car, and I felt free. I was done writing. A weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

And then I started thinking about deadlines again and how I need to write an article about the dangers of aluminum in deodorant.

But I quickly shunned the thought. “No, Susannah. You are done writing and you are done with all of the bullshit that comes along with it. You don’t love it anymore. It’s been driven right out of you. Being forced to write has driven out of you the desire to write at all!”

But I came home and wrote this.

Why?

Because it was something I wanted to write. I want to write what I want to write.

I want to rant.

I don’t want to write about mother-effing rocking chairs anymore.

I don’t care about self-promotion. I don’t care about getting my name out there. I don’t care about being featured on the front page. I don’t care about branding myself. I don’t care about it anymore. I can’t care about it anymore.

I just want to write. I want to rant.

And that, my friends, is what I’ve just done.