Wrangler Dani

I took a day off yesterday (not of my choosing, a nasty bladder infection laid waste to all sensible thought or ambition) and it gave me time to think. Actually, I’ve been thinking for a couple of weeks now – what am I doing?

The only thing I’m good at is now the only thing I do, frighteningly enough. I realize that I’m a decent writer, but I’m certainly no Jane Austen, and maybe it’s just sad to toil at something every day only to be mediocre at it. It’s slightly unnerving to think that I switched my major in college from a marketing communications degree to print journalism, and that heady, sudden decision at 19 changed my life forever. Did I really know what I was doing then? Do I now?

I still do a lot of “marketing communication” – after all, that is most of what Wrangler Dani offers, so I guess maybe I’m overstating the point. But inside of the workings of this little media company I’ve built, with my corporate blogging accounts and social media presences, is my own voice, wondering if it still has anything to say. Better yet, is it talented enough to say it?

Desire is one thing, talent is another – together they are formidable, and make our giants: the Brad Paisleys, Elizabeth Gilberts and J.J. Abrams – those people who somehow have sweated long enough and thought hard enough (and been given enough natural gifts) to make us swoon at their revelations and hang on their words. They speak for us, they say what we never could, what we aren’t talented or gritty enough to declare ourselves.

I guess I’m having a completely normal artistic crisis – where I feel boring and dumb and supremely under-talented for the story I want to tell. The funny thing about blogging is that you can see the rolling hills of my angst – from feeling fresh and inspired to dejectedly wondering why I would ever choose a profession which is best known for “bleeding on the paper”. So I won’t even try to pretend that this is some original moan or logical level of blah.

But it’s there, nonetheless, and I’m stuck with a degree and a decade of work and really nothing else that I’m even remotely good at. I don’t have a conclusion, other than I’ve been itching at this for a couple of weeks now and it’s hurt like a peeling scab until this moment, when I put it on paper and mused in print. So that has to count for something.

Right?