First, I want to say thank you sincerely to anyone who’s been reading these dumb words every night. Seriously. I almost know who exactly you are (Google analytics has pretty much increased my lurking tenfold.) The Internet is awash with every kind of talent; I cant thank you enough for spending even a second with these words. I realize it’s now only the seventh day of this chapter, but writing every single night has been such a beautiful burden.

A coworker today, checking in on this month’s progress, asked how I’d been doing. She asked delicately, as if asking a burn victim, afraid to touch his skin. I think maybe that she was afraid that all of the introspection had made me too sensitive.

But almost the opposite is true. Spending time writing had been absolutely amazing, I suspect the same is true for anyone sweating through the difficult labor of pursuing their passions. And it has been tough, but necessary and good for so many reasons.

1) I get to be alone. For the most part, writing is a pretty solitary indulgence. But it’s a good one. I’ve spent hours this week at coffeeshops, my face twisted in frustration, adjusting the rabbit ears of my soul, trying to channel my inner-Don Miller. Writing offers me an escape from interruption, a kind of meditation and a way to connect to something bigger than myself – even if for only a few minutes.

2) I get to sort myself out. And It’s a strange process, writing is. Most of the time it’s the kind of persecution I’d employ if i were trying to learn my enemy’s secrets. But sometimes, That enemy is me and it’s my knots that need undoing.

3) Writing brings you into the other. There’s a profound elemental mystery in writing. In our small, human way, it’s a way to speak something into nothing; participate in a tangibly divine act. Forcing the immaterial into the immediate material. It always changes something. And, in a world where apathy is expected. I’m ok with that.

So, thats why I do it, or at least this week it is. What about you? Why do you write?