Writing is a socially acceptable form of getting naked in public.
Paulo Coelho
When I was a kid, music was my outlet. I couldn’t play a note, but I desperately wanted to, and I always had a tune in my head. But lyric writing was very much an outlet.
Not that any of those “bands” or songs ever saw the light of day, but even now (some thirty-plus years later) I can still remember a couple of the song lyrics I wrote, and the tune that went with them. I guess certain things in your childhood never leave you.
I always wrote. Sometimes for school, sometimes for myself. I wrote story starters that never got further than the first couple of pages. I wrote movie scripts that lasted about four minutes. I wrote poems. I wrote political stump speeches in my teens when I thought… no, knew that I’d be Prime Minister one day. Or maybe just a Senator.
Music is still an outlet for me, I dj’d during my twenties and thirties and I host a progressive house podcast still today, but writing is something I’ve always had to do.
I’ve often struggled to find outlets for my writing. I’ve been on Medium at various times, I’ve written on LinkedIn, I’ve pitched articles for tech online publications (and had pitches accepted, and never finished). I’ve created my own blogs several times, redefined them countlessly, and then put them to the side, only to do something else six months down the track.
As any reader of this humble blog can attest, sometimes my writing struggles for cohesive narrative. Sometimes they’re over argumentative. Sometimes they’re cathartic.
But they are always things that are necessary for me to exist in that moment.
When I don’t write, I can feel lost. Just now, I spent a good twenty minutes just walking around the house looking for something to do, but not knowing what. I just needed to write. It gives me focus. Purpose. It drives me to finish whatever thought I’m trying to put down “on paper”. Not that that always happens – the countless draft posts here and elsewhere stand testament to that fact.
And yet this need continues, unabating. Until I hit publish, or save the draft, only for the next day and the need to be there again.