(February 7, 2010) I’m often asked why I choose to write a blog so laden with personal history and opinionated observations about the world around me. It’s usually new friends or not-so-close acquaintances who want an answer. Those who know me well tend to need no explanation.

When I began writing this blog in June 2005, I asked the question myself. Was I trying to figure out something? Why I left New York? Why I love Chicago? Why I find it so hard to consistently win a daily battle with my ADHD? Writing Chicago Carless has helped me explore many such issues. But learning these answers or any others isn’t why I blog.

I write because in this life, that’s what I’m supposed to do. German philosopher Rainer Maria Wilke in his Letters to a Young Poet provided the best explanation I’ve ever come across. It’s an oblique but powerful explanation (so powerful, apparently, Lady GaGa recently had it tattooed on her left arm):

“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple ‘I must’, then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.”

For some people, it makes perfect sense that someone might feel fundamentally compelled to create through words. Such people don’t need quotes like this to understand that writing could be an end in itself. Others read quotes like this and immediately begin to belittle the idea of a primal artistic urge. In my experience, these are often people who are unhappy that they’ve never found such a primal urge in themselves.

I write because I’m a writer. It’s not what I do, it’s what I am. I don’t write out of bravery or mean-spiritedness. I simply confess and opine as honestly as possible.

Technically, that makes me a memoirist-pundit. My deeply felt compulsion is both to ground myself within the world around me (memoir), and to question the status quo that I find there (punditry). In the 21st century, a blog is wonderful tool and platform for accomplishing these aims. So I write this blog.

And I’d crawl in a mildewed log and die if I couldn’t.