Writers write.

One of my resolutions this year was to write everything. I think I meant blogging, or storytelling, at the very least. After all, if I'm going to make the effort to help the tree fall in the forest, someone should hear it, preferably as many someones as possible.

This, I know, is selfish and not really the point of a writing resolution. If I wanted to be heard, I should have resolved to achieve internet fame and fortune, right? It sounds like that's really what I was after.

Anyway.

Energized, I spent all day weaving a story from an experience I had on the train this morning, tying back to a discussion Sir and I had this weekend in regards something I've been thinking about for a while. It was a lovely idea. I noodled it around while in meetings, jotted down items in various notebooks and (sorry Rachel) strung together pithy phrases in my head during spin class. I fully intended to create something this evening, post-gym. Something writerly and awe-inspiring. Something worth reading.

Before I could sit down in front of my computer, I got into it with a gym friend who was frustrated with her job. I left her in the locker room, but I just couldn't let it go - for whatever reason, I felt really connected to her plight. So instead of pouring out prose as intended, I wrote her an email.

It was a terrific email. It really was. I analyzed, I sympathized, I energized. I broke her situation down into numbers and percentages, various audiences and potential outcomes of her energy expenditures. I had an introduction and a fully-developed body before drawing everything up into a beautiful conclusion. I was witty. I was touching. I told a story. I was on fire.

It was probably the best thing I've written in a long while.

Sir came home just as I hit send and asked what I was writing. I heard myself tell him that I had intended to write something tonight, but instead had put my energy into an email and was disappointed to not have anything to show for it. His reaction was something like this --

"Yo dawg, I heard you like writing..."

Ah, me. I wanted to write? I had written, and written well. I wanted to have something to show for it? I  had made my friend happy. The tree had fallen, and a really important person had been around to hear it. I had done the thing, only I was too wrapped up in labels and audience-longing to call it.

Sometimes I'm such a dunce. Maybe resolutions are not end points, but lenses through which we see ourselves a little bit clearer along the journey, if only for a few weeks (until, of course, we forget about them and go back to a lifestyle of sloth).

Maybe I'll write the other thing tomorrow. The end.