The first things I remember writing are the things that I have gone back and read as an adult. They were not so momentous that they stuck in my brain for twenty years after my childhood, but instead, were little artifacts of elementary school Jon that I was able to re-read and revisit. I know they exist and that I tried my hand at stories and ideas because I put them down on paper and let them out of my head.
I don’t get assigned to write college-ruled two-page stories anymore, and no one grades essays I may or may not write. But now, at thirty four years old, with another username and password created for another service to host my writing, I begin with the typical first post with first-day-of-class vibes where I need you all to know why I’m writing and why we’re here. Red pens and rubric not provided.
Writing has never left my life. Not for any extended period of time, anyways. I have focused elsewhere during certain seasons of life. I have bottomed out and struggled to put words to the struggles going on off the page. But always, there were secret journals scrawled over with words attempting to understand my illegible feelings. Almost always, there were lines of a song that popped into my head and though often copycats, were not repeating what I’d heard but instead something new my brain cooked up. And often, even at my lowest, there was the Bierma family Christmas newsletter that I gave my best Garrison Keillor treatment to turn our ordinary lives into entertainment for my family’s relatives and friends.
The public record of those writings is small. Those journals sit in a box or on a shelf the instant they’re filled, I don’t record and publish my music (though if you google around you may find one or two secret stashes), and I don’t flatter myself to assume those Christmas letters exist anywhere other than the landfill or recycled into your printer paper. Those stories I wrote as a kid are preserved in a tub thanks to my mother. There might be letters sent to friends with enough sentimental value to be saved. I also wouldn’t presume that except I see how my wife keeps every word I’ve written to her, and heard from a friend who allegedly saved a bag of gifted coffee that I Sharpied a note on.
But the repeated place I’ve been able to present my ongoing thoughts has been blogs. I can’t remember the first blog I started, but it goes back to at least high school. Another in college, another during my time in Ukraine for my financial partners, and one during that same time for my more “creative” writings. Then again in my late twenties, I took up the mantle, only to shrug it off eventually.
Always, those blogs started with The Intro Post. The Intro Post is the post where I felt inspired, encouraged, and brave enough to start writing. Not just start writing, though, but also explain that I was publishing it for the world to read. And not just publishing it, but justifying it. Not a manifesto of why you should read it; a manifesto of why I was writing it.
I never found readers outside of my family or friends. I never tried to attract people. But even for a small audience of people who love me enough to be interested in what I had to say, I always felt the need to explain why I felt compelled to do this. Why not just write these in my journal? Why put these into the oversaturated world of online content? And why each time did I try to apologize for past inconsistencies and promise renewed faithfulness to the craft?
Now, standing on the precipice of this new venture, the fulfillment of those years of writing, I stand before you and present to you….just kidding. This is another site where I hope you get to read what I write. I have dreams and aspirations it goes somewhere, finds its audience however big or small. It might or might not. I hope you enjoy it and come back to it. But ultimately, this follows in the line of blog after blog where I am writing for the sake of my writing. This post is more to inspire myself to not quit and lean into this thing I enjoy than to convince someone to read.
When I look back at those childhood stories, I’m grateful for the chance to read the archive I left behind. I can say the same for the blogs I’ve written. Each entry is a point in time, an opinion I still stand by or have grown out of, a water bottle thrust into the stream of consciousness and filtered into a jar on the shelf, preserved and though not always as crystal-clear as I remember it. I know I didn’t always get all the giardia out of it, but I tried.
So that’s why this is here. I have a career I think is a pretty decent fit but drains my brain, I have other hobbies that I enjoy, and a new wife I love dearly and spend as much time with as I can. I could stop writing and be okay. Probably. But in all of that, I keep filling journals. The poems and songs ebb and flow in frequency, but don’t stop washing up. My wife reads her love letters and the poems I one-take before forgetting about and says Don’t stop writing. So I write now for the same reasons I always have, and a few more. To say slowly what I can’t get out quick enough in real life’s blitz, to scratch the itch, to recognize the gift. Thanks for reading.