#5 Why do I write?

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Day 5 of the 365 day challenge and I’m already struggling to come up with ideas for writing. That’s a bit of an odd feeling since on the daily it feels like I’m always exploding with ideas and not enough time to execute on them. So I figured I’d write about the process and what drives me to write (what a cop-out right?).

I write to think:

I write things down because usually my ideas start as something fuzzy in my brain. Over the years I’ve learned that not all my ideas are worth writing down or exploring (i.e. my typical shower thoughts), but the good ones always start out fuzzy and disorganized. Then I put it on paper and it’s still pretty disjointed. This allows me to spend some time organizing my thoughts then step away and gain some distance from the idea or problem I’m trying to solve.

Writing my ideas down has worked well for me, but there’s one thing I still think I need to improve on, which is the ability to quickly describe complex thoughts. Sometimes the words don’t come to me immediately, so I rely on pictures and diagrams. The problem with drawing out ideas (aka pictionary) is that it adds another layer of interpretation. So, I’m also writing to get better at communicating.

I write to focus:

For the last 10 years my job may be described as a moderately controlled stream of chaos. As an engineer and consultant I was jumping from business to business, problem to problem. As a lawyer I was jumping from client to client, matter to matter, issue to issue. As a founder of a company my life is not that much different. It creates this manic sensibility about your day that you just grow accustomed to, only to understand (once you have enough space to do so) that it’s a completely insane way to live your life. For me, I’ve found that writing helps me focus only on one task at hand. When I’m writing there are no distractions and I’m focused only on the thoughts at hand. Sometimes it’s stream of consciousness, sometimes it’s me ranting (let’s be honest, it’s mostly me ranting), and sometimes I’m trying to document thoughts and perspectives so I can revisit them later. Regardless of the intended effect, I’ve at least practiced intentionality at least once a day, and for me that’s worth it.

I write to reset:

That’s also why I adopted journaling (or as my friends like to refer to it — writing in my diary). When I first started writing in a journal, it felt a bit weird. Like I was somehow confessing my thoughts to a piece of paper. A few weeks in, however, and I found a groove and it went from “This feels a bit weird” to “Wow I can’t wait to write about this in my journal.” For me, journaling is like clearing out my brain’s cache before I go to bed and shut the machine off.

So yeah, that’s why I write. And I’m doing this for me, but I’m posting it here so that I can be held accountable for the way I describe my thoughts and the hope that maybe it inspires you to write down your thoughts as well.