Why I write

I'm turning 28 in four days, 30 in two years. Something about these numbers compel me to start writing again, publicly this time. I've never shared my writing to anyone before. The closest thing I can remember was during my third year in high school when I joined an interschool writing contest called regional schools press conference as a feature writer. I planned to write about my experience as a father before but the timing just wasn't right—my daughter had just been born and I was starting a new job. The timing isn't any better now but I think I'm more confident and my relationship with failure has improved a lot over the years.

There's something about writing that helps sharpen your thoughts and ideas about the stuff you're writing about (to be fair, most of the time I don't even know what to write about, so that probably negates the clarity I'm hoping to get). I stopped writing about a topic a long time ago. All the writing I do up until now is the stream-of-consciousness kind when I'm journaling, which I guess is better than nothing, but that only does so much to develop the kind of serious writing that I enjoy reading from others.

The reason I write also changes when I'm writing for an audience. Suddenly, writing doesn't feel as personal anymore and I have to think and put more effort in making sure I'm getting my point across. When I journal, I don't have to second guess whatever I write about. The subject can change anytime, things don't have to be coherent. It can suck.

To be honest, I don't have a compelling reason for why I write. But I'll try not to beat myself up for it. I'm choosing to do something difficult and usually when that's the case, I know I should have a good reason for doing it. After all, there's only so much time and energy to do stuff. Maybe there's not even one reason but a multitude of tiny reasons that make this activity worthwhile.

There's the thought of leaving my 20s and wanting to encapsulate the remaining years of being a young adult. I vaguely remember reading in economics class once that life has stages and your 20s are the exploration years. Maybe writing is an effort for me to get clarity on who I want to become.

There's also the idea that writing forces me to be present. I don't think I can write if I can't pay attention. I probably can actually, with AI—but it won't be unique in a sense that my life is unique, (and not some weighted average, next token prediction of what life is like). So if I hope to write about anything meaningful, I need to start paying attention. I'm not saying I'm absent-minded and I always have my head up in the clouds, just that writing might just be the tool that makes presence more frequent for me.

There's also the possibility that I really don't have to stress about finding a reason to write. Writing doesn't have to be a means to an end. It's enough to do it plainly because it's fun. In any case, there's only one thing that'll bring me closer to finding out what that reason may be, and that's to keep writing.