Why I Write

I go back and forth with my frustrations for posting my work on Medium. I worked more than seven hours on one post that had a ton of research and original graphics--something useful for others--and it didn't get "recommended." Then I have something that took significantly less time that got recommended and shared. In fact, out of the three articles that I worked on this week, the one that took the least amount of time and had the least amount of research and sources was the one that got recommended.

Then I go to the app and see a post with a headline, "These Things Might be Harming Your Dog." Thinking it was a story written by a veterinarian or a vet tech, I clicked on it. It was bullshit. Total bullshit. "Buy a harness" and "use a flat collar" and "don't put them in a hot car." ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

It's clear I haven't mastered myself.

Then I wonder, does anyone really care about making positive change in their lives? Do they want to master themselves, or do they just want to be validated and do what they want? I wonder why I'm putting so much effort into writing things that aim to help people put things into perspective when I can just write bullshit articles with affiliate links just to get clicks and dollars.

I suppose if I took that aim, I might be successful. I could write bullshit pieces. I could bang out a listicle every hour and market stupid shit that people don't need. Clearly I wouldn't make a good influencer, unless a company that sells cashews wanted me to market their products.

Here's a potential article: "Ten Reasons Why You Should Eat Cashews (And You'd Be Surprised at #5)." For fuck's sake.

Yet I still endure. Perhaps it's the same spirit that keeps me exercising each day. It's the same spirit that pushed me to the finish line in some of my long races.

If anything, my writing is keeping my intellectual and spiritual curiosity piqued. I have a love for learning. I have a desire to keep growing. Each day a piece of my calcified false self gets chipped and my true self gets to shine.

And I remember that a writer writes because she has to, like she has to breathe. A writer needs to exhale before she inhales. There might not be an end, or a finish line with everything a writer writes, but that's ok. I wake up each day and wonder, "What can I write?"

Some days it's rant pieces like this one. Other days I honestly have something that needs to come out. And it doesn't come from me. Spirits of so many great thinkers shake me up inside and I explode with words like a shaken can of Coke.

Those days I feel something has left me. There is an energy that burns and burns while I write. I get so excited and inspired that I can't write words fast enough. Once I hit "publish," I just collapse. It's like I finished a 5-hour race. I'm totally exhausted. I can't write anything else that day.

So yesterday I published a piece that was "eh," and one that I had been working on for months. The first piece got recommended, but the second--more personal--got ignored. Will eyes ever see it? Who knows. But I needed to release it to make room for new thoughts, new words, and new growth.