WHY DO I WRITE?

I like to figure things out and I've been at it for over 78 years now.  It's taken me in a lot of false directions and involved plenty of mistaken concepts.  I was so sure back there in my late teens and early twenties that I'd been specially chosen for a great mission.  I'd been called into "the truth," and I was going to be instrumental in ushering in and setting up that great kingdom Jesus promised and Herbert Armstrong so graphically described.

That led to great disappointment and disillusionment about twenty-two years after it began.  I catalog all that in my autobiography (http://www.hwarmstrong.com/believing-the-unbelievable.pdf).

Some lives are relatively placid most of the time.  However, I've noticed that, even in those cases where it looks like everything has been an idylic "walk in the park," when you learn what has gone on behind the scenes, there've been a lot of thorns on those apparent roses with which some people's lives seem to be filled.  They are just hidden from public view.

Soldiers aren't the only ones who suffer from PTSD.  Just as with the military, the severity can vary, but we all are subject to some kind of post traumatic stress due to the happenstances of our lives.  It can involve any myriad of things from a divorce to the sudden death of a beloved child or the tanking of a career.  It provides for a lucrative career field for those in the field of psychiatry, and fortunate is the person who can take advantage of their skills.  I never could.  I had to stumble my way through to the relative peace and clarity I enjoy today.

Everyone has a story to tell and insights to share.  The elderly often yearn to pass on what they have learned but have very little opportunity to do so as the younger people around them are too busy accumulating their own experiences and the tales they will one day wish they could tell.  That's why I wrote my little book.

In a recent blog, I steered people to Johnny Cash's song "The Man in Black."  I've spent some more time studying his life and his last flurry of work struck me.  His wife told him, when she was near death, "Go to work."  Johnny did.  The last few weeks of his life were and unstoppable avalanch of artistic accomplishment. 

I'm in a similar position.  I know my time is growing short.  I used to chafe at the fact that all these things I ruminated about went nowhere.  I had to content myself with daydream fantasies of telling it like it is, but they were all bottled up inside.

My book was my first attempt to get my story and my accumulated "wisdom" out there.  It cost a lot of money and basically went nowhere, so I put it online on one website where it just "sits" most of the time. 

Then, blogging came along, and Facebook.  It took awhile for me to realize what a great tool they could be.  I know my audience is very limited, but at least I can get what I'm thinking and desperately yearning to say out there to anyone who will take the time to read.  I can draw attention to other things I just stumble upon and which would go unnoticed by most people.  It's liberating.  So what, if somebody disagrees or gets angry?  They can vent in a comment or get their own blog and Facebook page. 

That's why we bloggers and Facebookers do it.  It's therapy.  It's fulfillment.  It leads to the peace of being able to just "say it."