Write Reasons?

Each time I spend hours refining an essay on writing and editing only to see it gather less than 100 views over the course of a month, I am grateful all over again for Anne Lamott's gentle/tough reminder that one ought never to write for the sake of gaining success or notoriety. Writing is its own reward. I say again, for the sake of the internal choir: writing is its own reward.

Which makes writing like everything else that matters. And this reminds me of another piece of wisdom I've gleaned in almost a decade of fresh discovery, growth, and vitality about what a healthy identity and a sane orientation to the world look like.

In short, if I *ever* wish something were different so that I could be okay, then I will have lost my way ... because being okay (in most cases and maybe in every case) has little to do with externalities. Instead, being okay is a decision to know and embrace that who I am, and my fundamental value, and even my overall well-being in life, are located inside me and not in any person or thing or accomplishment that accretes to me from the outside world.

Knowing this, I can inhabit and pass through all manner of circumstances without fear and without incurring fatal wounds. My selfhood might fluctuate a little bit with circumstances, but it will not spike or sink, because I have not lashed myself to the latest piece of situational flotsam to float by.

In the meantime, I find my emotional storm over whether people read or like my writing constructive, because it reminds me of the waves and troughs every writer rides, and it helps me to practice inflating a spacious life raft of empathy for my clients.

The more I learn to love myself and my creative adventures separate from chances of fate, the more I can help my clients to similarly float in a space of love, gratitude, and awe as they embrace themselves and their own creative expressions, which are brilliant and precious simply by virtue of being theirs.