Maybe it is the very question. That which pulls me back, week after week- with all the irregularities in between.

Each time one of these begins, the wonder and worry of why plumes about my neurons.

So…

Why do I write?

Is it habit?

A likely suspect. I have been at this for what is now well in the second half of a decade. Has it become so ingrained into my behavior that the lack of it could cause some mild to catastrophic collapse of self? That this theme is now a rather heavy part of the make up of what I call an identity. Several hundred posts regarding the mental survey of an individual’s journey from the dusk of adolescence into what must now be called adulthood. Categorically, that of a college educated (laughs out loud), blue collar, tax paying, single, relatively young father who moonlights as some dreamt up beatnik poet and folk crooner to an audience that a writer would call intimate and a scientist would call small. Neither being wrong.

So, has this habit become so foundational that it can no longer be shook?

Or is it habit’s ugly relative?

Have I become addicted to this, no matter how fruitless it may be? Is the dependence so strong that the continuation must be forced to outweigh the detriment? This form of literary and somewhat public pastime could be part to blame for my many flaws and faults. Searching for answers to questions fantasized just might be at or around the roots of my own isolation, of my brief history of imploding and exploding romances and what hopefully isn’t a growing lack of empathy.

A 21st century junkie for what may be nothing more than a glorified open diary.

Or journal. Journal sounds better to me. More masculine. More sure sounding. Though there is likely little difference between the two.

Meaning journal or diary. Masculinity and certainty are most definitely not synonymous. For a vast array of reasons.

Or is it something more divine? Something of passion. Of fate. That sort of vibe which Nordic gods might relate to. Is this part of what the layman might name a calling?

Each week I wonder. And doubt. And despite that, it continues. And as with most things in an expanding and indifferent universe, the cause belongs in more than one place.

This has become habit. I am dependent on this, at least slightly and possibly more than I can comprehend. Which may have some negative side effects. And yet, this is a work of passion. It derives itself from such and has only perpetuated onward because of that primal emotion.

But, that doesn’t answer the question, does it? It only blends all that was asked in something of a singular query. A lonesome why. But a why, all the same.

Now, I warn you. There may be nothing of substance in this for you. I am not here to tell anyone how to live their life. What sort of lunatic would ever profess such a thing when they cannot even gather their own.

If anything, this is only a documentation of digging about my own mind. I am no online prophet. Not that anyone would think me so. I only have a modest vocabulary, a quaint enough charm and enough will power to type a few hundred words per seven spins upon the axis.

There are better folks than I who could tell you what to do. But I imagine they would only ever tell you that you’ll know more of what to do in your own life than most others. Any others. The Yoda gimmick.

It is my hope that I don’t seem to be telling anyone what to do. If I knew what to do, I wouldn’t be doing this. Also, inside me resides a disdain for any form of anything that would be marketed as ‘self-help’. It is an impossible thing, you know. To get self-help from someone else. That’s just regular help. Which is fine. Wonderful, even. But self-help means you have to help your own self. Which would strongly suggest that you are just as helpless to give self-help as you are to receive it.

This is not an advice column. It’s more like realizing, mid-session, that you remember your new therapist from that awkwardly memorable one-night stand when you were both younger. Last name threw you off. Guess she’s married now. I wonder if she remembers. If your dumbass did, she definitely remembers. You still have the same last name, stupid.

And besides, would self-help openly tell you at the end that it doesn’t know what to do either? Of course not.

So.

I don’t know. What to do or why I do whatever it is that I do. I do know that I keep at it. Whatever it might be. I’m watching it happen right now. Which is a different time for you.

But the urge, or necessity, or whatever- the feeling that I need to stop writing. That this and all other forms have failed me. That is not present. I don’t feel compelled to stop. It may even be that all the whys pull me back. The dark matter of my endeavors. A strong, and thus far, mostly inexplicable force.

I still ramble and pander. And will go on doing so, in any foreseeable future. It is not how that plagues me so greatly. I don’t question so often whether I should.

I do always wonder why. Perhaps, at times, unnoticed. But as close to ever-present as any one thought might get.

Why do I write?

I don’t believe I could ever quantify the occasions I’ve asked that question. It’s far too many to count.

And yet, here we are.