Why do you write?

I mean, obviously you write. You certainly didn’t find this blog with the google search words, “Curmudgeon Catholic father from California.” You’re probably another blogger, looking to connect, maybe, with other bloggers like you. You typed in the right words that got you here, and here you are. Am I close in that assessment?

Certainly nothing wrong with that, just saying. I’m jumping out on a limb here and assuming you are a writer. I am, too, despite the title of this post. So I suppose the title requires some explaining.

There was a time when I thought that maybe I could blog my way into a living – that I could do creative work and turn a dollar with it. My passions, for a time, were (maybe still are) to write stories, opinion pieces, songs, and music, to name a few. There is a secret satisfaction I get in crafting something creative. Maybe this is why you do what you do, as well.

But at some point, I had to accept that that will simply not be my life. In both a positive and negative way, my world is about my day job, my wife, my three children, my church, and the assortment of other responsibilities that press me for time. I cannot lock myself in a studio apartment, reading everything from Shakespeare to David Brookes looking for inspiration to publish a best-selling book or launch a wild and interesting YouTube channel. I have too many hustles already to do another side-hustle.

Not to mention the lines you have to stay within to succeed at such a vocation. I’ve probably already lost you by now in my introspective ramblings to the universal void of the internet. If so, I don’t blame you. “Is this a Catholic blog? You said you were Catholic. A cooking blog? How to be a dad? What’s the deal?”

Therein is the problem. This is the worst of all possible blogs: the personal blog. Me typing my “disparate thoughts,” meaning that you’ll probably read on one post about how I’m totally stoked that my 9 year old daughter wants to run a coffee kiosk at her school to my thoughts on the homeless problem in California. What will the next topic be? God only knows. Though I have a few ideas.

Here’s my answer to why I write: I write because I love to write. I write because writing makes me feel at peace. I can take the tight knot that is my heart and somehow untie it, free it up a little bit, by laying it out on a virtual piece of paper. Don’t ask me why imagining someone is reading this makes that process easier. It just does.

I create content because I want to create something beautiful, like a wildflower on the side of a mountain. It doesn’t really matter if anyone sees it in the end, so long as it exists in the world. And the process is as important as the product.

Maybe I write because I really am a writer, just not a successful one, which, I suppose, puts me in good company.

Anyway, if you’ve read this far, thank you. Good luck and God bless you in whatever you happen to be doing on this platform.

(Pic generated by AI at Midjourney)