It’s been many decades since I put aside the guarantee of the good life as an engineer; choosing instead the perpetual uncertainty of making a living as a writer. The decision doomed me to flirting with a fragile existence on the outskirts of poverty. It also redefined my idea of just what constitutes “the good life.”

I was lucky.

Very early on, I found my way into advertising as a copywriter. I earned while I learned that having an idea and building a story around it are two very different things. In a very short period of time I became a “Creative Director” and empowered to hire people who were far more talented than me to do my bidding. It was a roll of the dice, right place, right time and all of that. I would have the idea, and my charges would somehow find a way to make it work and bring it to life. To this day, I admire everyone who ever worked for me and the task they faced in making what was in my head make some kind of sense or better still, an endearing form of nonsense.

I made a lot of money and managed to prevent any of it from paving a path to the comfortable retirement my own ads promised.Instead I put my money into cars and motorcycles and boats and airplanes and horses that I sold just before they acquired value and just after I spent countless thousands on mechanics and veterinarians to keep them running and flying and alive.

Writing is the strangest and most wonderful thing. It’s a hill to die on and many do. Writers have a habit of killing themselves. Statistically, it’s a dangerous profession. But I can’t think of one that offers more seductive pleasures. The sight of words stamping their authority across a field of snow with your fingers in the periphery of your vision and your imagination trying to keep up is a kind of cocaine.

Writing is an obsession, a confession, an attack, a cry for help and a tearful hope all in one. A blank sheet of paper is far more terrifying than a leap from an airplane or discovering loose gravel on the road ahead with your motorcycle leaned over as far as it will go without falling and sliding into an oncoming semi-trailer. Real fear is deciding which of the twenty-six characters to type first. The process of writing is defined by minutes of conviction followed by hours of despair. Together with guilt and often justified feelings of inadequacy. Being a writer is somewhat akin to being a comedian, and it isn’t funny. It’s the same kind of “look at me” but with the luxury of being invisible. Comedy writers are the most screwed up of all. Writing is the high-wire without a net and a constant calling of bluffs. Writing is naked-on-stage at the Superbowl; anticipating applause and accepting laughter.

Writing is thoughts of suicide interrupted by an even better idea and an urgent need to put it into words.

Writing is something that the better you do it, the more you become convinced that you’ll never be able to do it again.

Writing authors so much pain that as a parent, I have to question why I encourage my kids to whatever else they are doing, write about it.

I think that the real rewards in writing stem from the fact that you are forced into a third person role. You get to observe yourself and try to make if not a hero, at least a person of interest out of yourself. Writing humbles you in terms of the big picture and at the same time turns you into an egomaniac in expressing the pointlessness of your existence better than the next guy.

Actors claim not to watch their own movies just as writers claim to write off their work with the final draft. They all lie. The scenes we play and the words we write are a permanent record of a personal point in time. A time to try to forget or struggle to recreate. A point of departure; a reason to carry on.

In the end, writers wind up in a euphoria of selflessness like Robert Ruark or sucking on a double barreled shotgun like Hemmingway.

As Bob Dylan put it so well “the words got in the way.”