For a long time, I think I was looking for reassurance in the wrong places.

I wanted to know that I was doing enough. That I was good enough. That the thing I was working towards was going to work out. I wanted certainty.

But writing doesn’t really offer much of that.

There are submissions that disappear into silence. Pieces that don’t find a home. Ideas that seem brilliant one day and ridiculous the next. There are moments when I wonder whether I am actually becoming a writer or simply enjoying the idea of being one.

And then I look at the evidence.

Not evidence that I have made it, but evidence that I keep showing up.

I have written poems and finished them. I have submitted work even when I was nervous. I have had things rejected and carried on. I have written for other people and seen my name attached to my words. Recently, one of my pieces was published in the paper.

Seeing my name there mattered to me. Not because publication suddenly proved that I am a writer. I think I already knew that. It mattered because it was another small piece of evidence.

I had written something. I had sent it out into the world. Someone had decided it was worth publishing. And there it was.

Then I learned a new word. Attribution – being identified as the person who created something.

And suddenly I had a word for something I was beginning to understand about myself. I care about being recognised as the writer of my own words.

That might seem obvious. But it wasn’t obvious to me before.

Seeing my name in print used to feel like the achievement. Now I am beginning to notice something deeper. I value the work I create. And because I value it, I am learning that it is okay to care about how that work is acknowledged.

I was able to say that. And that, too, is evidence.

Not evidence that I am a successful writer. Evidence that I am learning how to be one.

There has been a lot of discomfort lately, and I’m beginning to wonder if discomfort isn’t always something to escape from. Sometimes there is learning inside it. Sometimes the discomfort is showing me something I hadn’t quite understood before: what matters to me, what I value, what I am willing to ask for, what I am becoming.

I don’t need every submission to be accepted to know I can submit. I don’t need every piece to be published to know I can write. I don’t need everyone to understand what I’m doing to know that something has changed in me.

I can look back at what I have actually done. That feels strangely comforting.

Because when I am tired or doubtful, my brain can tell me a very convincing story about how little I have achieved. The evidence tells a different story.

And perhaps that is what I am learning to trust. Not a feeling. Not a promise that everything will work out. The evidence. The small trail of things I have done, finished, shared, survived and begun again.

I don’t think I need to prove myself anymore. I think I just need to keep noticing.

Look. There I am.

Still writing.