Why I write, take 3,232

Sitting in a coffee shop, listening to OMD.

[Press play on the video above to listen to the soundtrack for this post. The song has nothing to do with the post, but I love it, and it was what was playing while I wrote much of this post.]

Why do I write this blog? I’ve written on the subject before, but one of my favorite things to do is to revisit previous topics at a different moment in time, from a different vantage point.

Lots of reasons.

Sometimes, I write it to get me hard. Sometimes, to write about what happened while I was hard. I’m an exhibitionist – it makes me feel good for you to see my hard-ons, to know what I do with them, what you do with them.

Sometimes, I write it to work through things I’m thinking about. I can do this in my journal, and I often do. Or on another blog (I have several). But this is the only one with much of an audience, so if there’s value to my thoughts being seen, reacted to, by others, then this is the place toward which I gravitate.

Sometimes, I write it because I’m proud, and I want to share my pride. Sometimes, because I’m ambivalent, or even ashamed, and I want to medicate my negative feelings with sunlight. Which always – ALWAYS – helps me.

Sometimes, I write it because I think it’s Important, in some capital-I sense, that what I write be “out there.”

I think I’ve written before that I had a writing teacher in college who said, “If you don’t think, as you’re writing, ‘You lucky bastards get to read what I have to say!’, then you have no business writing.” And there’s that: I think that, often.

I’m not a believer in much of the conventional wisdom around sex, love, and relationships. It just isn’t supported by my own experience, or by that of anyone I really know well. And I think there’s value to be had in people seeing those bits of conventional wisdom upended, challenged, by thoughtful people with integrity living in opposition to, disregard of, or at least, outside the bounds of, that conventional wisdom.

And then there’s another thing: sometimes, what I write resonates for readers. It normalizes their experience, they see themselves in me, or they see some part of themselves, at some point in time, in some part of the me I’ve presented here, at some point in my trajectory. When this happens, it doesn’t make my cock hard, but it does give my heart and mind the equivalent of a hard-on – a sort of intellectual, emotional hard-on. If I had a nickel for every reader who sent me a private thank-you for helping them make sense of their own lives, I’d have a bunch of nickels. I don’t have those nickels, but I do have the mind and heart hard-ons, and I’m grateful to you for that, for them.

7 comments

  1. I totally get the intellectual and emotional hard-on… I sometimes get that when I speak with someone and what I have to say makes them think, and you can see their mind at work… Though I don’t write as much as you do, so for me it’s really more about the conversations.
    To think that somehow I have something to do with this post made me tear up… emotional much?!
    So thank you! You know what I mean!

  2. It’s a funny coincidence (or perhaps its fate?) that you mention previous readers having approached you privately to commend you/thank you on something that you have written here that, subsequently, then spoke to them on some level, when I have, in fact, been debating for days now on whether to contact you privately to get your take on a subject I’ve been having trouble getting my head around.

    I suspect you’ve acknowledged that I am a new visitor and reader of your blog and its ever since I read the collection of your blogposts in ‘My Story’ that certain questions have been playing on my mind and its really beginning to bother me. Mostly, I just need a male perspective, but more crucially than that, I want someone who will be honest with me, brutally honest, even. And I believe you would be frank with me which is, ultimately, what I’m after.

    Let me know if you would be willing to lend an ear. I don’t need answers, as such, because I don’t believe what I’d want to discuss with you can be given a categorical answer too anyway. As I say, I’d just like to get a males perspective. On monogamy.

    Thank you for even reading this. x

    1. Chicks are funny. I have a “contact me” page that makes it ridiculously easy to reach me. I write that I love hearing from you. And STILL you need me to say “yes.”

      For God’s sake, woman, yes.

  3. Great song choice, but instead of focusing on intellectual and emotional hard-ons, all I could picture was the last scene in Pretty in Pink.. and it is just one of those 80’s movies that I don’t usually admit to knowing (or liking…”What about prom, Blaine!!!” I mean, nothing, nevermind..that’s not a quote from the movie..of course not. Grin).. Now, back to intellectual hard-ons.. I’m not equipped to get a hard-on, but just reading smart writing does it for me. I think that is why I enjoy your blog so much (and I’ve given it some thought). Anyone can write about getting laid.. I just dig thinkers.. and thinkers with such a sexy attitude..you fluster me regularly..it’s.. nice.

  4. He blushes? Somehow I doubt that. Responsible for the blushes of many though, I’m sure. Just a guess of course. Yes. Grin

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