Getting High on Recovery

I fell in love in Junior High, not with a girl but with my imagination. That was the year I began my infatuation with writing.

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It was grade eight and whenever I was asked to write a story, my mind went into overdrive. Writing was my way of getting high… it still is.

Writing is great, but sometimes it’s a pain in the ass. I am really good at procrastinating: I can make an hour last a full eight hours. But there is a moment in writing, it is as if a door bursts open and floods me with light. My soul has to sweat a little, but writing can be like touching God.

I love that writing declares hope. Pick any story about hopelessness, death, despair or poverty of spirit. Writing is like having a bag of Ninja throwing stars in the shape of a semicolon. “The semicolon comes between two independent parts of a sentence that could stand on their own, but prefer not to.” A story is never finished because there will always be other sides to explore. Every story has more life to live.

My job as a writer is to reveal a story, just like the gardener reveals her garden through care and feeding. Writing about someone else’s story unearths a part of your own story. You understand yourself more when you look through the eyes of another person. 

The goal of writing is to spill a little of yourself onto the pavement. Sometimes other people come over to ask you what is going on and your writing comes alive for them too. That’s a good day.

I need to shower and change my socks every day. My body knows that it needs to change a little bit every day. Writing is like a shower and change of socks, it changes me in the right places.

Writing is just damned fun. It is a rush to build a story and massage it until it feels right, or until you are damned sick of it. Then you risk it all and share your baby with the unsuspecting.

Sometimes it feels like you are catching stars. Writing is daring to shine even when you are surrounded by darkness.

The light bulb does not worry about whether or not it will light up the entire block, it just turns on. It is screwed up but it does what it supposed to do: give light to whoever is paying attention. Don’t worry about trying to be something more, or something less than you are. Be turned on to life as you write, read, collect, think. Go ahead, be a screw up… that is what will make you brilliant when you are ready. Be the bulb.

 ◊An Invitation◊

Why do you write? Do you write poetry, music, a blog or articles? If you would like to respond to the question: Why Do I Write, your words can be published with The Good Men Project. Interested? Message me on Facebook by clicking here.

Keep it Real

Originally published by SMSwaby at The Good Men Project.

Photos by Khalid Albaih and smswaby.