One may consider the above
statement to be self-evident. If we don’t write stuff, how can we know where we’ve
been, or more consequentially, who we are?
Alas, if anecdotal evidence from
riding the NYC subway for 40-plus minutes twice a day, five days a week for the
past 25 years is any indication, we, as an urban people-variant, are writing
less stuff.
As I look around me during this
particular Thursday (July 6), I see about thirty people in the subway car. An
easy 75 percent of whom are plugged into a device. The balance are resting.
I am the only person writing
stuff.
It wasn’t always this way. Back in
the late 1980s, when I first came to New York, some people were writing stuff
while on the way to work. Many others were reading books or newspapers: the
Times, the Post, the Daily News.
Fact is, I work at a paper, the
Post. Yes, I write stuff in the newsroom. Headlines, captions, copy for
graphics. I think in full sentences, and write them down.
When you’ve been writing stuff
your whole adult life, it comes naturally to you. A mind shaped by that
experience isn't drawn to whatever is flashing on an LED screen, or doesn't suffer FOMO about the next hot thing.
The stuff that you write: ideas,
feelings, what comes to mind when you simply open the journal, remove the pen-top and begin to order
your thoughts, take over. It isn’t fun, exactly, or not primarily.
It just is.
Like reading. And running. What
this blog is all about. Getting to the point that you follow your passion
without second-guessing. So that you increase the odds that you will coast into
old age without noticing time passing by.
Next: Running for Your Life: On Vacation
