Writing and the Milkweed

I’ve generally committed myself to writing 5 days a week with a couple of days of “rest” thrown in there for good measure. However, knowing that I’ve always got this itch to put fingers to keyboard (or pen to paper), I’ve decided I can probably squeak in a sixth day every now and then.

This past year has been an experiment in writing for me. It’s been a committment to writing daily, based around a simple image or images drawn from my collection. Most of these images are from recent history; in fact, the one you’re seeing above was taken yesterday. All of the writing is done impromptu, inspired by the images and collected experience of my life.

I’ve read with some bemusement as people have decried their daily writing “challenges.” On Medium, someone wrote about how writing for 200+ days ruined their life; in other places, people wax poetic about how writing is difficult in the best of times and impossible in the worst. Either way you cut it, writing seems to be a catalyst for complaints.

I suppose this is where I beg to differ.

Writing without purpose is decidedly a fool’s errand.

You see, while I sit down each day in front of my laptop and type, I’m not devoid of purpose even if my subject matter hasn’t been found yet. My purpose is in conveyance, in weaving together stories from the aether, in giving life to inanimate white letters on a black background. Though I may lack a subject, I’m no less intentional in sitting down, shutting up, and letting the thoughts flow.

This doesn’t mean that everything that proceeds from these fingers is valuable. If it’s any consolation, I view most of what I write with bemused wonder that anyone finds value in it. It’s a writer’s curse to view their output in a diminished fashion compared to the external crowd of observers. C’est la vie, I suppose.

Regardless of personal opinion, I’ve found that, just like the milkweed you’re seeing above, this committment to purpose has spawned greater and greater inspiration. It’s lead to pursuing photography with much more intentionality, to wandering with more purpose, and to viewing the world with much more wide-eyed wonder instead of critically. All this from the seeds of writing.

In the new year, I’ll continue this frenetic pace, I suppose, incorporating more academic and industry work into my daily routine. That certainly doesn’t mean a gross display of technological ideology being splayed out on these digital pages, mind you, but given I’m paid for it…well, I have to commit or quit, right? I’ll still be holding workshops or at least offering them to those who want one-on-one attention, I’ll still be here offering to listen, and I’ll still be.

Advent is a time of giving thanks, of appreciating what has come before, of acknowledging the “now,” and given voice to the eager anticipation of the future. In a way, it’s a celebration of all human experience: the past, present, and future. In these final days of 2023, I hope you’re finding cause to celebrate, to chart the course of your progress from hope to hope, and to rejoice in the remaking and renewing of another circuit around the sun.

May it ever (and always) be so.