Photo Courtesy of Snoopy.com

The moment I realized that I possessed the ability to not only write, but write well, was in my early twenties. I remember the exact moment. I was teaching my class of thirty-four 4th grade students and I was teaching them a lesson on creative writing by modeling a story on the whiteboard. As I walked them through the various elements of a story, I read it aloud to them and thought, “Hey. That’s pretty good. I have the ability to put thoughts together and make them sound pretty interesting.”

It wasn’t until about 7 years later, when I started this blog for my mom to see pictures of the Kidlet, then morphed it into a photography blog, that I started exploring my propensity for flowery prose (i.e. starting to write with a lot of adjectives). Since changing this blog to my online journal about my life after divorce, I’ve forced myself to practice daily the art of writing. And some days, it’s freaking difficult. Some days, I feel too vulnerable to share my life. Other days, I just have nothing to say. Then there are the days that words just pour out faster than I can type.

Last year, I made one of my goals for this year to get paid to write something…and I am happy to say that I get to cross it off my list! A few weeks ago, I was invited to expand my current work with UNDFIND as their Director of Brand Publicity and basically do the same work for SLR Lounge, their sister company. One of my responsibilities at SLR Lounge is to write articles, which is a daunting task. Though writing down my thoughts on this blog for the most part is easy because I write for myself, writing FOR someone is hard. My boss said to me today, when I asked how much of my personality can I show in these articles, that he wanted “Diet Hanssie,” and that we would “unleash the full Hanssie” little by little. Now, what does that mean?! Haha.

So, for now, I’m gonna be a little more filtered over there as I get my feet wet, but look out for my work at SLR Lounge if you get a chance. 🙂