Why Write?

To save my sanity.

That was the line I used when I first started to type more than just school assignments and emails and status updates. I told people I wrote to keep some sliver of myself from selling out completely and becoming khaki pants man (I prefer jeans and fear the day I have to wear anything beige or pleated).

Anyway, the part about my sanity is still true. Before my knees and ankles began telling me NO, I played basketball all the time. Since I was a kid, I loved going to an empty court and shooting all alone. Only me, the basketball, the hoop, and the pavement (which wasn't so kind to my lower extremities it turns out). Playing like that, with no one around, felt like sanity. The best way to breathe out anything clogging me up.

I don't play basketball anymore. I'm always afraid I'll hurt myself. Now, to breathe, I write. The keyboard is my court (and now and then my hands do get a bit cramped up). The blank white space on the screen is my hoop. The words are my basketball. And I am still me. Except I don't work up a sweat writing (usually).

A mentor of mine once said this: “I can't not write.” I understand that now more than when I first heard it. I write for the same reason. I can't stop. My thoughts are writer's thoughts: “That would be a great line! Take a note on my phone, now!” My eyes are writer's eyes: “Look at that couple, remember the details, take a note on my phone... when they're not looking!” My right foot has become a writer's right foot: “Screw the speed limit! I have to get home before these words vanish forever! Vroom!" My brain has become a writer's brain. I can't help who I have become.

I write because I am a writer.

That's the first time I typed that out and read it back to myself. It's kind of weird.

- Leonard Owens III

(December, 2012)

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