Lately I have found myself asking a question I never expected to ask.
Why am I writing such deeply personal essays?
It’s an odd question, because I have been writing for most of my adult life. Thirty years ago, it was journals that only me ever saw. Some nights it was sonnets. Other nights it was prose.
Not because I wanted to be a writer.
Not because I thought anyone would ever read them.
I wrote because I had to put my thoughts somewhere. Ideas have a way of taking up space. If I leave them alone, they stay with me. They circle. They return in the shower. They interrupt a workout. They arrive at three o'clock in the morning when I am trying to sleep. They refuse to leave until I have given them somewhere to go.
Some are ready the same afternoon. I sit down, they come out, and it is done. Others want to stay longer. And when one of those is finally ready, it lets me know, because it stops visiting and starts pressing.
So, I write.
If I had someone sitting across from me over a coffee every Tuesday and Friday morning, perhaps these essays would never exist. We would talk for an hour, I would leave lighter, and the ideas would have found somewhere else to live.
But I don't.
So, I write.
Writing isn't what comes after the thinking. Writing is the thinking.
For forty years I represented some of the finest luxury brands in the world. I was careful. I stayed in my own lane. I stayed away from social media. I never wanted to be the executive who had too much to drink on a Friday night only to discover on Monday morning that a client or a member of my staff had been there to witness it.
I curated every signal I sent because I understood that people were not simply looking at me. Whether fair or unfair, they were looking at the brands I represented. I don't regret that for a second. I don't feel as though I missed out on anything. If anything, I think it saved me from a great deal of unnecessary stress and heartache. But those brands also came with an unwritten responsibility.
There were things you simply kept to yourself. Not because they were shameful. Because your role required restraint. Today there is no heritage brand standing behind me.
There is only my own name.
The truth is, I don't think my writing is becoming more personal. It’s becoming more honest. I’ve never looked for attention. I avoid it. That hasn't changed because I started publishing. If anything, it makes the whole thing stranger to me. A man who spent four decades making sure the signal stayed controlled now writes twice a week about things he used to keep to himself.
But the writing was never a bid to be seen.
I don't write because I think my life is extraordinary. I write because it is the only life I know well enough to write about truthfully. If those experiences happen to help someone else make sense of their own, then I’m grateful. But that has never been where the writing begins.
The writing begins because the conversation in my own head needs somewhere to go.
I have lived alone for the better part of my life. People sometimes assume that must have been lonely. It never was.
There are always two people in every room where I am.
My thoughts...
and me.
Thirty years ago, those conversations filled journals that no one would ever read. Today they become songs. Twice a week they become essays.
The conversation hasn't changed.
Only the audience has.
Until next time,
It starts with a conversation.