The Write Reasons

Yesterday, when Black Fried Day was over, I went to go take a bath after mostly sitting on my butt all day with the family, watching football, basketball and movies while eating leftovers. When I looked in the mirror I saw there was a giant booger in my left nostril. I was kind of shocked that no one had said anything to me, because it was HUGE. Your family is supposed to tell you when you have boogers in your nose. But upon further inspection I realized it was part of a chewed up potato chip. Grant says he swears he didn’t see it but wanted to know how I knew it was a piece of potato chip? 

“I didn’t EAT it! Gross! I knew because it still had ridges.” 

How does something like this HAPPEN? Did I snort it out from my partially filled potato chip throat when I was laughing? Did I cough into my hand and then itch my nose? WAS IT FROM SOMEONE ELSE’S MOUTH? 

There are so many questions that go unanswered for me on a daily basis. 

So there. I have made myself giggle about something silly that happened to me. It seems just that on day 30 of my quest to post on my website every day for 30 days that I should be entertained by myself. Otherwise, why do this right? 

Writing a post every day has not been easy. On day fifteen I whined to my bestie about being sick of myself already at only half way through. But I don’t think it’s me I was really sick of. I’m easily entertained by me. I think more so I was feeling bad about adding to the noise on social media.

There is SO MUCH NOISE. 

It’s a tricky thing, writing. Writers write to write but we also write to be read. And to be read in the vortex (aka the internet) without becoming an overbearing social media hound is nearly impossible. (It’s this new thing called algorithms that I am currently unwilling to figure out.)

I have been thinking a lot about what it may have been like to be a writer before any kind of advanced technology was created and there was just pen on paper and this burning desire to SAY for the sake of saying. If you wanted “likes” you wrote letters to people about your ideas and if you were compelling enough, they wrote back. Though it was and still is considered rude to not acknowledge hand written letters. 

Pen on paper is my preferred means of writing, especially when I’m working on poetry. That nobody seems to like except me. Though I’m mostly okay with that. I understand it’s probably confusing to read about potato chip boogers in my nose one day and a restless poem about ghost words the next. Who IS this person on Peaceof8? Is she even stable? 

But that brings me to the point of this “Closing Post”. I have been exploring in my mind these 30 days what it is I want out of the writing on this blog site. 

Healing? Maybe so. I know that every time I write something and then release it into the vortex, I feel lighter and freed from the nattering in my head. Things are worked out on the page and then let go. That seems like healing to me. Several years ago a friend and I were talking about my blog site. I said I was thinking about shutting it down because no one was really reading it. He reminded me that if one person reads a post and is made to feel better in some way either from laughing or crying or just a little truth sharing, then it’s worth it to keep going. So there is maybe the idea of healing another person while I heal myself. 

Immortality? Oh yes. Maybe a little bit of that. When you leave a trail of words people can still find you even when you’ve gone out of their physical sight. I bet when I’m dead my kids will actually read my posts to see what I wrote about them. Though they may be grossed out by the potato chip booger. 

Money? I used to tell myself that when I was making money writing I would then  be a successful writer. But I look at some of the blog sites where writers write for money, and I am bombarded by ads or asks. This noise to me distracts from the words. I make plenty of money with my noisy enough day job.

Fame? If I write regularly am I hoping that fame will come? I guess there will always be a bit of desire for fame. It’s hard to overcome the need to be read by as many people as possible. But if I’m truthful, I know I’m not ready for fame yet. It’s possible it will come someday but right now I’m still trying to find my voice, which is still going through the highs and lows of puberty writing. Fame would mess up the search and I’d be forced to abandon my bad poetry and short story attempts for the pressure of finding funny in everything. And some days things just aren’t funny and I want to write about that too. So I’m grateful for my small but loyal group of readers who put up with my inconsistent voice. They are my fuel and have reminded me about the importance of commenting and sharing when I have read marvelous words from other writers. This is the ultimate compliment a writer can receive and right for the write reasons.