Sandra V. Calzada's Blog

Being alone often feels like the opposite. It feels heavy. Awkward. Your phone is quiet, the room is too silent, and every little thought suddenly gets louder. You remember old mistakes. You replay conversations. You notice how long the day actually is when no one is filling it for you. That is the rocky part.

At first, solitude can feel like something is wrong with you. You might think: everyone else seems connected, busy, loved. Why am I here, by myself, again. It stings. You feel every sharp stone under your feet. You want to run back to any kind of noise, even if it does not feel good.

But if you stay with it a little, something very small starts to change. You begin to see that the silence is not attacking you. It is just there. Your thoughts come and go. Some are painful, some are kind. You drink a coffee alone and notice it actually tastes good. You go for a walk and, for a moment, you are not lonely, you are just a person walking, breathing, existing.

That is the soft part. Not magic, not some big spiritual awakening. Just tiny moments where being alone feels a little less like a punishment and a little more like a place where you can rest from pretending. Where you can be exactly as you are, without needing to impress anyone.

The rocky path of solitude is soft because, underneath all the discomfort and fear, there is a quiet space that belongs only to you. It is not always easy to reach it. Some days you will trip on the same stones again and again. But every time you choose to stay with yourself, even for a few minutes, you are learning that your own company is not the enemy. It can be a home.

Everyone says writing a book is hard, but they rarely tell you what that actually feels like. It’s not hard the way people say running a marathon is hard, or learning a new language, or starting a garden. It’s harder in stranger, deeper, quieter ways. Writing a book asks for your time, yes, but also your memory, your patience, your confidence, and often your ability to sit with feelings you’d rather leave behind. What no one tells you is how long you might spend alone with your own thoughts. You start with a blank page and an idea that once felt urgent. You picture your characters, you map out chapters, you make playlists, light candles, maybe even start with a sentence you love. Then comes the slow part. You sit, you try to write, and you realize the idea in your head and the words on the page don’t match. Not even close. You write, you delete. You rewrite, you second-guess. Sometimes a scene flows, and you think, this is it, I’ve got it. But most of the time, it feels like pushing a wheelbarrow through mud. And if the story you’re writing comes from a personal place, if it asks you to pull from old memory or emotional truths, then the work becomes even heavier. You’re not just writing scenes. You’re confronting versions of yourself you thought you’d outgrown. You’re hearing your mother’s voice in a line of dialogue, or feeling your own childhood surface in the shape of a room. You wonder, is this honest, or is this performative? You wonder if you’re exposing too much. You wonder if it even matters to anyone else. Some days it feels like creation. Other days it feels like excavation. You’re not writing, you’re digging. And you don’t always know what you’ll find. The truth is, writing doesn’t always feel cathartic. Sometimes it feels like pressing into a bruise. Sometimes it’s silent and still, and the words don’t come. Sometimes it makes you doubt your voice entirely. What kept me going wasn’t confidence. It was something closer to stubbornness. The belief that if I stayed with the story long enough, something would begin to shape. A thread, a sentence, a character that finally spoke with clarity. Writing a book is not about being brilliant every day. It’s about being brave enough to keep showing up even when you don’t know if it’s working. Even when you’re sure it’s not. It’s a strange kind of endurance, one that isn’t rewarded in obvious ways. There’s no applause when you finish a chapter. There’s no guarantee anyone will read it. And yet, somehow, you return to the page. Not because it’s easy. Not because you’re certain. But because you believe there’s meaning in the making. Because you believe the story deserves to be told, even when it resists you. Writing a book takes everything you’ve got, and then it asks for more. And still, somehow, we write. If you’ve ever tried to put your experience into words and found yourself stuck, or if you’ve ever tried to write something real and walked away feeling hollow, you’re not alone. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. It doesn’t mean you’re not a writer. It means you’re in it. It means you’re doing the work. And one day, maybe without noticing, you’ll look back and realize that the thing you built—the story, the character, the voice—only exists because you stayed.