I don’t really know what I want to write about tonight. Part of me was hoping that if I showed up here, in this space, that something would come out of me–like, that the act of being here would remind me of who I am and what I want to say to all of you people.
Do you want to see it? Do you want to see the space where I come to work? Check it out:
Isn’t that all fun and meta? Totally is. And it’s a totally inspiring writing space, too, right? Riiight.
Today has been strange. Relationships that I thought were ordinary and easy have become complicated and draining, have impinged upon my energy in a way I wasn’t expecting. Sometimes I think about giving up everyone and becoming some kind of lone wolf–well, lone plus 3–I’ll take the husband, son and daughter into my improvised hermitage. But that’s it. To heck with everyone else! To heck! To heck with this unwanted grief!
Maybe that’s what the job is– maybe that’s what growing up really is. Figuring out how to be a solid and satisfied self in a world that seems like it couldn’t possibly care less about you. I complained recently to family that the one thing I have, the one thing I care about more than anything–writing–is the one thing I have to beg others to care about, about me.
And I have to come to terms with the fact that what I love, what I want to do, is in a way out of step with how most people want to spend their time online. Who, for example, really reads blog posts, anyway, except to find something that allows them to stand up and say, YES! this is ME, this thing someone else wrote, and I am sharing it! Social media, look at what I’m posting and know me better! (I’ve done it–we all have.) So what good is my writing to anyone if they cannot quickly transform it into a means of enhancing or refining or complicating or whatevering their own self-presentation?
You’re looking for yourself in this post, Reader, and I know it, and I know that that’s just how it is.
So it’s weird–I come to this space to write and to find MY voice, MY identity–and the voice comes; I settle down into my way of thinking when I start to type in this space–but what I am really doing, intentionally or unintentionally, it matters not, is refashioning myself as a mirror or some kind of transparent figure, so that anyone who comes here can see not really me but the part of me that is compatible with THEM and THEIR self-concept.
And my self-satisfaction somehow becomes someone else’s. And then I become once again weirdly dependent–or we all are–you need me; I need you; we can’t opt out of any of this and become 7 billion wolf packs of one.
Jackie Lutzke 
You nailed it, Jackie. We write for a variety of reasons. We write because we enjoy the act. We write to express our voice. We write to influence others. We write to entertain. We write because, if we don’t, we will burst.
I put my soul into my sermons. So often, nary a word is spoken in reply to this key thing I brought out, this teaching that was finally put clear for the hearer, or this unique expression I created. Or, perhaps, I simply didn’t move anyone. Or, perhaps, they are just so used to what I write and say that, whether bored or stirred, it has reached the level of commonplace and, well, ho hum.
We don’t stop writing, do we, no matter the outcome? I think the “bursting” aspect is the ultimate reason.