Paraphrasing Ernest Hemingway in the title as I can’t be arsed Googling the quote but he’s right.
Writing is bleeding in front of a keyboard.
Showing emotions, telling stories, exploring vulnerabilities.
I write for myself and others as a living and it comes easy to me. It is as natural as walking and I do a lot of that too.
Both writing and walking, you see, are therapeutic and cathartic. I’m in the lucky position, perhaps, or did I create the luck, of not having bosses so I can write and post what I want.
Writing recently though has been a physical act of picking up a pen and turning a new page and letting thoughts mark paper. I started The Secret Diary of Stuart Walton, aged 57 and three quarters, on 14th December 2022, and have done it since, every few days.
None of it will ever be published as it’s intensely private as a journal but what it has allowed me to do is flick back. Turn the clock to yesterday or last month – which you can’t do in life. Read how you felt on the 14th December, a month later on 15th January and a week ago.
Those little marks of ink are always there – a reflection of how I felt at that time.
What they’ve done too is allow me not to be blindsided by the past. When I have an urge to don rose-tinted glasses, I look back, read and remember events and emotions that caused actions in me.
I do sometimes wish, however, that companies who retain me to write, would occasionally allow me to bleed on their blogs. Too often, they want vanilla posts to please Google, company directors and stir emotion in no one.
No one likes beige, do they?
People want to see blood. Hear stories. Have emotions stirred.
So what I’ll do is leave the anodyne posts for clients who don’t like risks, who prefer safe blog posts and bleed regularly on my Moleskine books, my LinkedIn newsletters and own updates.
I have my own bandage that repairs and aids recovery – writing.
Writing every day.
In my voice.
Because that’s the one I know.
