A wise woman, Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry is own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”
For me, that responsibility comes with writing, with thinking about, ‘how can story make the world a tiny bit better,’ or ‘how can story and information help one person.’
And Harry Truman said, “America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”
There is so much that’s important in those quotes.
Fear is not what you want to build change on. You want to build a life and a story on courage and imagination. You need to be persistent. You need to be determined. You need to be responsible. And you need to guard your freedom to build those things. And you need to guard other people’s freedoms, too.
You want to build your life on faith and hope, on action, on one step at a time moving forward.
What are you doing to help other people?
What are you doing to help yourself?
What are you doing with your freedom? With your story?
Those are the truths I’m thinking about today.
Here is what I believe:
Your words matter.
Trying to write stories and truths?
It matters.
You matter.
That’s why I write. Because I want to remind myself what matters.
Writing News:
My Writing Barn class starts this Sunday and a high school student I mentor (volunteer gig) gives her senior presentation today, which is awesome. I’m so psyched for her and amazed by her.
My nonfiction picture book about Moe Berg, the pro ball player who was a spy, is still coming out March 1 and I’m super psyched about it. You can preorder it.
And… um… I’m starting a podcast. It’s going to be (cough) quirky. There’s truly no hope of it being anything else, honestly. I mean, I’m wearing handerpants.
