New Beginnings
This is the first of what I hope will be many blog posts. If you are reading this, then today marks the culmination of many years of hard work: the launch of my website. I built this space to display my work and see if there’s anyone out there who enjoys it. This is an incredibly exciting—and admittedly nerve-wracking—day for me.
In this first post, I want to talk about what compelled me to create this website and pursue writing at all, despite having every reason to give it up.
The past two years have been some of the hardest of my life. They have been marked by isolation, self-loathing, and countless rejections. This is the context in which the bulk of my portfolio—and this website—were born. Many of what I consider my strongest pieces emerged during the darkest periods of my life.
My attempts to get my work published through traditional routes have more or less been met with catastrophic failure on all fronts. Many of the pieces in my portfolio have been rejected no fewer than twelve times—others even more. Eventually, it became clear to me that if my work was going to be published, it would have to be by me. I’m grateful for the rejections, because they’re what ultimately pushed me to build this site.
I don’t know what will come of this. Maybe everything I’ve ever written really is garbage. Maybe those editors were right. But this is something I’ve dreamed about for a long time, and I knew the only way I’d be able to face myself in the mirror was by finishing what I started when I first put pen to paper.
As you engage with my work, you’ll come to understand me in a way that almost no one in my life ever has—or ever will. These aren’t just poems or stories. They’re my collected experiences, observations, and feelings about the world. These are not mere words; they are my testimony. I’m both eager and terrified to share them with you.
What’s included in my portfolio at the time of writing this post is a small curated selection out of many finished or nearly finished pieces. Only my favorites have made the cut—the gut punches and the nasty right hooks, the works I cried while writing and still tear up while re-reading. If this proves to be a successful endeavor, I’ll be regularly updating the portfolio with new pieces.
I view this website launch as a fresh start for me—a chance to connect with readers and, hopefully, make a living doing something I love with every fiber of my being.
Thank you for being here at the beginning.
—Josh
