Mark Manson’s “7 Strange Questions that will help you find your life purpose”
Three things in the past few months have been pushing me to write. First one was the publication of an awesome collection of short stories by George’s brother-in-law. When George and I spoke for the first time after it came out, his comment was, “You were going to do that.”. The second was the pleasure I got from the vacation updates from Greece. This article was the third.
I know why I stopped. It wasn’t some feeling of failure, or inability to think of what to write. No, my Faustian deal was that I would give it up, at least for now, because I wanted a life different than the one writing promised. One that allowed me to live as a normal human being, and not the miserable, nocturnal, dissatisfied fiend looking for the next high that I have been chasing since the first time I read a piece of writing I had just finished and was moved.
I buried that version of me in a shallow grave about fifteen years ago, after I had revised a book-length document to the point of being able to recite entire passages by heart. Some of the best sentences and turns of phrase that I have ever read are contained within it. (So you see I don’t lack confidence in my writing.)
I sometimes miss the person that wrote that book. But I also remember looking like a junkie, and probably smelling like one, too.
But as I read the seven questions below, they all lead me back there. Maybe it’s time to get a shovel.
