“What excites you,” he had asked me a few month ago. “What gets you up in the morning.”

I didn’t have a clear answer then but I do now.

Nothing.

My passion has slowly been replaced by obligation. I do this because I said I would and you expect me to.

That sliver of time between the darkness and the dawn when the dream seems attainable. Just need to do it.

And then you realize, “Who would walk the dog?”

The only thing more terrifying than the first night your children come home from the hospital is the day it all ends and they leave you, excited and giddy about starting their new lives and never notice you standing on the porch with tears welling up in your eyes, terrified about how you will live your new life without them underfoot and fighting the urge to cling to them and hug them tight like they were rag dolls.

But you don’t because you are the parent.

Sorry for the spoiler.

I have friends who start blogs when they are looking for something. A job, themselves, a new lover, a place to be, somewhere to fit in, stuff like that.

They blog passionately, frequently and intensely. Sometimes the posts lead down a path of discovery and sometimes they seem to wander aimlessly.

But eventually the blogging stops.

And my heart aches. I know that they have found what they are looking for and I will probably never hear their voice again. I’m happy for my friends, but also painfully sad at being left behind. I fight that because it is a selfish feeling. I can tolerate almost any other insult except being accused of being selfish.

I am very happy for you, but I miss your voice. I will miss the future you and treasure the voice you have left in my head.

I worried today that I have not written anything here because I have nothing to say.

But that is not really true.

I have nothing to say that I want to say in public.

But I have a lot I want to say.

Just not here.

That ok?

Good writers write about what others are thinking.

Great writers write about what others fear but don’t say.

Exceptional writers write about what scares the hell out of them.

I think.

Which is probably why it is really hard to become an exceptional writer.

I went to throw away some prescription bottles and found myself intensely irritated that I could not peel the stickers off the bottle. “Why not just throw them away without removing the labels?” I asked myself.

“Because it has my personal information, my doctor’s name and more importantly, the drug the bottle contained.”

“So what,” my inner voice lamented. “Nobody cares and nobody is going to go through your trash.”

And then it came to me as clear as crystal. I care intensely about my privacy because I know with absolute certainty that out of the 6.7 Billion people alive on the planet that I am unique. I am important. I matter.

Me.

Being forced to give up that privacy forces me to admit that I am just one out of many interchangeable human beings. That is something I am not going to just willingly throw in the garbage.

You?

I appreciate the time and effort of those who spend a life researching an author like Hawthorne, Woolf, Chopin, Shakespeare and the like as it helps many understand the authors more fully, but I am often baffled as to why anyone would choose to advance the creation of other writers instead of creating their own original works?

I first became aware of my face when I was fourteen. I had a job in a rectory sorting and recording the collection plate donations and doing light cleaning. Most of the time was spent watching TV, however.

One evening, all the priests were together at dinner — which rarely happens — and I caught my reflection in the polished surface of the toaster that was sitting at the far end of the table. It didn’t look anything like how I was feeling inside.

“Why do you always look so mad,” she says to me often.

“I’m not mad. This is my neutral face.”

“You always look so angry and that makes me mad.”

I’m often giddy and awestruck by simple things. I’m amused and happy when I discover new stuff. I’m anxious and scared about others around me.

And I often write long prose in my head.

But I am rarely angry. I wish my face would say that.

I used to think that everyone had a secret aching desire to change the world, to make a difference and to leave a legacy.

I’m thinking I have been wrong.

I think most people just want to exist in the world. It is quite possible I have arrived at the wrong conclusion because I seek to surround myself with people who choose to make a difference and anguish over the fact it doesn’t cut deep or fast enough.

Not everyone is Moses, a friend of mine reminded me this morning.

This changes everything.