777 and counting…

According to my WordPress dashboard, I’ve published 777 posts since I built my site, Defying Atrophy, in January of 2015. The vast majority of those were written after I got hooked on poetry in 2020 during National Poetry Writing Month (#NaPoWriMo), but even so, that’s a published entry of one post every 3.75 days or so. “Not bad”, I say to myself.

BUT IT COULD BE SO MUCH BETTER.

IT SHOULD. I SHOULD.

Writing heals me. Writing gets my brain moving in the right direction. I FEEL BETTER when I write.

“So, Ben, why aren’t you writing more often?”

If you take a look at Poetic License from May of this year, I sort of explained how I chose to step away because writing began to feel like a chore during April’s NaPoWriMo, and so I quit. No “shoulds” in this boy’s vocabulary anymore.

This is ‘Murica, dammit. Don’t tell me what to do.

I’ve done 4 posts since then. Long live rugged American individualism.

And I’m sliding. Mentally, physically, spiritually…

I don’t want to keep sliding.

I want to write.

Not because I “should”, but because I need to write.

And I choose to write.

Writing heals me. Writing gets my brain moving in the right direction. I FEEL BETTER when I write.

(That line felt good enough to use twice. So there.)

I’m not sure what my writing will look like going forward. Poetry has driven me for over the last three plus years (sorry, Frank), and self-revelatory posts about my deepest and darkest secrets and fears had largely filled the pages before that (sorry, Mom).

But I’m not really sorry. I’ve got to be me. I’ve got to write my heart. It’s an existential necessity.

And I need to exist, for more reasons than I can count. And it feels good to finally WANT existence.

So, here’s to #778…