It would be an interesting sociological experiment to catalog my thoughts over the past five years or so. I’ve changed a lot in the past five years. I graduated high school and college, my parents divorced and remarried, I dropped out of a major ministry and ended a three year relationship, I left my fundamentalist Baptist church and started going to a liturgical Episcopalian church, I started a 9 to 5 job and I got married.

A brief overview of my writing from the past five years would give you a glimpse of the vast changes. I’ve always had a lot of swirling thoughts and dreams and competing ideas of what I wanted to do. I’ve always seen myself as a writer and always wanted to do something with that. I graduated with a degree in writing, and now I work as an editor. I love the work, but I still have that yearning to write. I want to write a book. Part of it is probably wanting to see my name in print. That bit of pride whispering to myself how cool it would be to see my name in print. Of course when that voice starts speaking another voice is telling me how quickly my name in print would be lost in the sea that is the modern publishing business.

But I still want to write a book. I want to tell stories. I want to impart wisdom. I want to challenge. I want to inspire. I want to make people see the world in new ways, the way books I’ve read have challenged, inspired, and made me see the world in new ways. I’m not even so concerned about what kind of book I write, I just want to write one. Another voice tells me that’s a good sign that this is an egotistical drive. But maybe it’s just the writer in me wanting to put words on paper one way or another.

A psychotic thought has gripped me the past few days, and I finally realized it was centered around what would have been an ideal writing environment. I was able to ignore all the downsides of this idea because it would force me to do the writing that I so want to do. Which really makes me think about my priorities. Maybe I just need to suck it up and start writing that book. Maybe I need to be anti-social (or more anti-social) and write this book. Maybe I need to let other commitments go and just fuel this need to write and see what happens.

I would expect my pride will take a big blow. And I need that. I think once my ego is deflated and I learn whether or not I can write, and whether or not anyone will ever see my writing, then I’ll be in a position to see the real value of writing and (hopefully) it will all be worthwhile.

It’s funny; if you surveyed my thinking over the past five years you’d find many rantings just like this one. One of these days I’ll act on it; hopefully before I’m 65.