Why write? I would rather not do anything else!

Over the years, I have come to understand how much I have lucked out in being in the profession in which I am, because there is nothing else that I would like to do, even if I were paid a gazillion dollars.  Being here means that I do not have to literally, nor metaphorically, drive around with a bumper sticker along the variations of "I'd rather be ..."

It also means that I find it difficult anymore, to say the least, whenever students approach me with questions on what they might want to do.  I would like to honestly tell them, "it is your life and you need to figure that out, and I have no idea what truly gets you going." 

I suspect that most people I interact with in academia do not truly want to be here.  When colleagues complain about their work, or how they are looking forward to the end of the term, or how they "survived" another week of class, I imagine that they, too, like most people on the planet, have trapped themselves in a "I'd rather be ..." world.

I, unlike those colleagues who are always dreaming of a great escape, look forward to going to classes. To help students understand and interpret the world. To listen to students getting excited about being constructive. So much so that as the academic year draws to a close, I get a depressing sense of "it is all coming to an end." 

In leading such a life, I blog and write opinion pieces for newspapers. I do it more for myself, and rarely for anybody else.  I do these because, well, I would rather not do anything else.  The feedback I get from friends and strangers is a fantastic bonus and I shall surely miss them if they stopped coming.  But, a lack of feedback will not stop me from writing either.

Perhaps it is an addiction?

Writing has always been a pleasure for me—a way to channel a disorderly world into an orderly form. And yet, as with any palliative, writing has an addictive aspect. I often tell my writing students that this comes with the territory. If you want to make writing a career, it must be a compulsion. It must be something that you cannot not do. 

Nope, it is not an addiction as much as it is simply a reflection of who I am.  Like being right-handed.

So, I write.

There are a lot more like me, even those who aren't losers like me, who write because we don't know anything better to do.

lots of us don’t publish… it doesn’t mean we’re wasting our time.

That was the late writer, David Foster Wallace, in a response to a request on feedback on a manuscript, advising that not getting a work published is no cause for despair.

Like most people who end up measuring themselves with the money they own, sometimes writers end up measuring themselves by their publications.  In doing so, they forget that the writing is primarily for themselves and not for others.

Writing for myself is a wonderfully enriching selfish act.