I’ve been writing for years now. Actually technically we have all been writing for almost our whole lives. Although, writing means something different for the people who view it as their life. Even though most people who write won't go on to publish stories, or books full of poetry, it does something for us writers that nothing else ever could.

Pens feel different in our hands, pages of journals and scraps of napkins hold more significance to us than the people who see them for what they are. Almost as if ink runs through our veins, shoots out from our finger tips.

In dark times, writing is the light, and its brighter days, writing is the snapshot of the memories.

Freedom of true expression lies between the lines of these sentences. Maybe this is why English was never my strong suit. Decapitating fragments of poems and stories trying to figure out the eight different ways the author was trying to say what their point was. Always ignoring the sheer beauty of the art form. Always ignoring the grace of the way the words flow in and out of each other.

Its hard, the digitalized world, making all of our thoughts look beautiful, clean pressed.

What about the pieces of paper with coffee spills, x’s through the words we hesitated on, wrinkled lines from where the tears fell. Journals are pretty much a writer's heart living outside of their body. Something we can carry with us that shows who we were and what we were feeling at an exact time, in words greater than ourselves. Writing is almost like breathing, it's done without thought. Finding stories at the bottom of a handle, told in metaphors about sunsets, and sidewalks. Breaking down the cliches and turning them into concrete details. Finding a new world in every aspect of the one we walk through everyday.

If anything I have just said doesn’t resinate with you, doesn’t drive a spark through your blood. Put the pen down.

Writing should never be forced out of you, it should drive you nuts to the point of going crazy if you can’t get it down on paper. Writing should never be done for someone besides yourself. Never for accolades, never for glory.

It should be almost second nature. Your safe place, your happy place, your home, your whole heart. There are worlds that grow in the empty spaces of our brains, without a piece of paper they might break down the walls of our skulls.

People get lost in all sorts of things, paint, pianos, percocets. But I will always be lost, in pens.

As Bukowski said, “Find what you love, and let it kill you.”