From the Back of a Cop Car to Book Deal

How Resistance To Creativity Can Almost Kill Us

Photo by Mario Azzi on Unsplash

Eleven years ago, I found myself in the back of a cop car, my teaching clothes still on, arrested for a DUI. 

Most of life’s unshakable suffering, the tracked mud of regret, comes from denying who you really want to be. 

It manifests when we reach for a craving instead of a question, when we stay too long with the wrong person, when we are stuck inside a life, so far from what we wanted, we reach for whatever is loud enough—booze, social media, shopping—to cover up the plain fact that we have let ourselves down. 

Prior to the night of my arrest, I’d spent thirty-one years outrunning the only thing I wanted: to write. When I told others I was a writer, my fear said Liar. Said Fraud. How can you call yourself a writer? You never write. 

These days, I know better. Creativity is the reward. Not a book deal or an Instagram following. It's the process that makes you.

But back then, I pr…