Writing again…
What is it to write? Why do we write? Does anyone really want to read the words I write? Does that even matter?
All valid questions, all valid things to think about.
Perspective:
My current role is less defined by my title and more defined by the scope in which I operate. For the past year I have been the Principal Data Scientist at Gallup. Which, given the paragraph opener, is not informative at all. I plan to write an entire post about what the last year has been, but in short I am consistently enveloped in technology, new technology, exploring how it can operate at our company and how it might change analytics for us.
That said, I miss writing. I miss the focus it requires, the creativity it allows to construct a sentence, paragraph, and the longer message of intent. I miss that.
I don’t write because I have a story to tell.
I don’t feel like I’m misunderstood.
I don’t feel like I have anything particularly important to say to anyone of any importance.
I write because I feel like I should. I write because, to me, there is value in expression in it. There is feeling in it. There is ‘learning’ in it. Perhaps there is a path to writing something that someone might want to read. Perhaps not.
Harper Lee said “Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself…It’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.”
Perhaps that’s it.
I’ll say this: I wrote a lot in graduate school. I felt comfortable taking thought and then organizing those thoughts into words on paper that articulated such thoughts in a clear and concise way. The operative part there was ‘comfortable.’ That is, I felt closer to being able to communicate difficult or complex topics with relative ease. That is, apparently, a muscle that atrophies. I found value in it and I just don’t really use it much anymore. I currently exist in a world where prompting your way to a paragraph is the easiest route people take these days.
I don’t blame them–writing is hard.
To that, I plan to write more this upcoming year. I’ll write about psychology, learning, education, and statistics. I’ll probably also write about life. I’ll write because I want to.
Reuse
Citation
@online{l._debusk-lane2025,
author = {L. DeBusk-Lane, M.},
title = {Writing Again...},
date = {2025-12-27},
langid = {en}
}