I don’t remember exactly when I came to writing.  This part of my artistic history is fuzzy, without a logical path or series of connections.  I am not a lover of words or language.  My struggle with both of them humbles me.  But when I read good writing, I can feel it.  I don’t commit prose to memory even though I have been a lifelong reader since the age of four.

I do remember journaling as a corporate frequent flier over ten years ago.  To this day, the sound of ice breaking in a plastic bag dropped repeatedly on the galley floor by the cabin crew makes me want to write.  As I collected miles, the travel changed me and I noted these observations, images, stories, so I could think about them later and understand them.  I didn’t know then that writing was a means.  I just flew, worked, listened, and wrote in the margins of my life – one word after another.

And that’s how I became a writer.

And why do I stay?

This is a fair question.  Today, I live in a busy city with a busy mind in a life with an overflowing inbox, a buzzing BlackBerry, and a long commute.  These and other distractions from writing are my life and I return to the blank page because I don’t understand something unless I’ve written about it.  This practice on the blank page sustains me, makes me laugh, stretches me, and fills in the gaps of my journey and experience.  Writing is for my mind like a deep breath is for my body.  My life without writing is only half-lived.