I’ve been writing since I was eleven. I can’t remember why I started writing but I was writing hate mail to all the kids who didn’t like me and were emptying my cucumber juice bottles into the drain just to humiliate me.
I don’t remember what I wrote but I never sent those letters. I meant to keep them until the day I appeared on public television as a rockstar.
‘Losers!’ I would say to them in my big, flashy outfit.
I never became a rock star
and I stopped hating them when I was 16 when one of the bullies told me that it was stupid to keep hating on people who don’t even remember hurting you.
I agreed.
I wrote when Blogger was new
and when Blogger was no longer as cool as WordPress. I wrote on something called Vox and Plurk (both appear to have had plastic surgery since the day we first met).
I started over 20 different blogs between 2004 and 2015. (You can look for them online and blackmail me with the embarrassing stuff you find, written by an emo, dark teenager)
I’m so obsessed with writing I write on 8 different websites at any one time.
When I meet people I judge them by the number of websites they write on or if they have a blog and if they update that blog regularly. The only time I don’t think this is if I’ve been creepily stalking someone’s blog to know that they own one and update it regularly.
I judge everyone else.
I can’t stop writing
or breathing. So both must matter to me just as much. I would die if I stopped doing either.
I once asked my English teacher if I could write for a living. I thought what a wonderful job is must be doing something I enjoyed so much.
‘You would die.’
I don’t think she was lying but when she said that blogging was just a hobby for most people and Facebook hadn’t quite developed their share button yet. So I don’t blame her. She couldn’t predict the future.
But it’s 2015. Everything is possible now. I mean that literally.
Thousands of people make money writing, some even really bad writers make money writing.
But this isn’t the point.
The point is this
I don’t know you. You don’t know me. I’m just a random internet person. I have no stakes in your life.
But I want to ask you this:
Have you ever felt it so difficult – so freakin’ difficult – to stop doing something? You love it so much you would rather trade your sleeping hours for it?
For Casey Neistat, it was film making. He’s been making films for 15 years and won’t stop. If he stops, he’ll die.
This video he made using Nike’s ad money is quite possibly my favorite video of the year.
Watch it and then try very hard not to want to start running around and get started on that thing that’s like breathing to you.
I heard a podcast and watched a talk by Casey Neistat today. I want to share what I learned from those videos with you in another post. So come back here if you want to learn what I learned.
P/s: I promised myself just one post a day here but this is my second one today.