Start and Restart: How I Started with Writing

It was one hot day, my third grader self feels a bit lethargic as I just finished having lunch and was waiting in school with my friends for the clock to strike 2pm so we can start practicing; a very normal thing for us to do for our extracurricular activities. Normally we'd just go around our school, play games, or go to the nearby corner store to pick up snacks when killing time. This day was different. Our class adviser saw us sitting at the stairs near the library. She called us over and even though we weren't doing anything wrong, we all got quite nervous and thought we'd be scolded. Instead of a dragging sermon, she asked me and two of my other friends to go with her. She walked us to a room at the corner of the same floor we were in. It was one of the school club's room and it was all our first time being there. She instructed us to go seat anywhere we'd like. She then told us that she thinks we have potential with writing and asks us if she can train us in hopes that we can eventually represent our school in competitions. My friends and I looked at each other, seemingly asking one another what our reply is going to be. After feeling each other out, we said we'd love to join but would have to ask permission from our guardians first. She looks absolutely delighted and quickly gave us club forms for our guardians to sign. We all went back to where our other friends are staying to kill time, placed our forms in our bag and practically forgot about it. It's weekend and my mom was helping me arrange my things in my school bag. I was busy trying to tidy up my bag when my mom saw the club form folded carelessly in between my school notebooks. She asked me what it was and I explained it to her. "Well, do you want to do it? she asked me. My mother has always been confident in my skills and would always encourage me to try new things without forcing it onto me; which now that I think about it, is something that I am very grateful for. I told her I am pretty okay with writing and have always enjoyed the writing parts in my exams so I said yes. Not long after, I added another extracurricular activity in my list. I started training with my friends. We all were training for a specific kind of writing. One of my friends trained for editorial. I trained for feature writing. It was interesting learning how to properly write pieces in my mother tongue. After months of practicing, our teacher would submit our pieces and we'd eventually go and compete with other writers from other schools. I wasn't able to be the champion but I was placed 7th in the overall ranking and 3rd in my category. This fueled me that I continued writing throughout high school and would do it until college. I also earned some money by writing short write ups for clients while I was in college. There was a time when I tried to pursue a different path but regrettably, that didn't work out. After a lot of twists and turns, I eventually went back to writing and birthed this blog — a place where I can combine doing the things I love with the hope of making a living out of it. Truth be told, I don't even know if things are going to work out for me with writing but when one is lost, going to your roots and revisiting the place where you once felt found seems like a good way to restart. Time will pass anyways.