Torman posed an interesting question: "Why do we write?"  I've been seeing the wonderful, thoughtful responses all over OS and had to jump in to the mix.

 I wrote from my earliest days.  I wrote to the old me.  I wrote short stories on little scraps of paper and hid them in the pages of books by Mark Twain and on the shelves between books.  Perhaps I thought they were my books even though only a single piece of paper held the story of my travels to Rome, or my post cards to Mars, or my warning to old me to never become a boring old adult that forgets to laugh.

In sixth grade the evil Nun, that a friend made famous through a dirty ditty, gave us the best assignment.  She gave us notebooks and had us write as fast as possible for various timed increments.  I loved those assignments.  I wrote top-of-mind, rapid paced descriptions of funny observations about my brother, the dog, the kid in front of me with the goofy haircut.

In high school I began writing journals. It was a new concept to write daily, to exercise the writing muscles of my hand AND my brain. Writing wasn't just for the school magazine, or assignments, or personal amusement.  Daily writing meant growth, building "a voice" and perspective. 

The day I graduated from high school, I moved in to the madhouse.  I refer to it as "the year I had three sisters."  My cousins fought daily - with each other, with their mother, with me.   My brother had his own place by then, and my mother was stradling two apartments trying to find a new job to join me in the suburb while she stayed in the city where she worked.   My journal became a coded me in Wonderland storybook of fighting woodland creatures that bit off each other's limbs and gouged eyes while I sat in my tree casually observing and occasionally losing a toe that dangled too low. 

At 20 I made a bad decision and entered a failed marriage that lasted all of five months.  I tried to journal.  It was against my nature to write about my situation in the negative light of reality.  I didn't understand that light or that reality.  I tried writing some dull, factual pages in my journal that reflected neither reality nor life.  If I couldn't write about that life, I needed to change it into one that I could enjoy and write about.  I drove through the Allegheny Mountains during a snow storm and returned back to the security of

As an adult I've earned money writing proposals, writing and researching and writing to promote products. 

Writing connects me to the world around me.  It's a way for me to relive the good times and remember the small detail that made all the difference in the tale.  A friend once told me that I'm a person "with my headlights always on."  I asked what he meant and he said that I'm always observing what's around me.  Telling and writing those stories gives me a chance to share those observations. 

Now that I've said that, I'd better get back to writing here more consistently.  I'd hate to shut down my headlights.