What do writers do?

I feel like they write.

I think I’m going to start writing again.

A few months ago, I decided to stop writing this blog. I had hit my goal — writing 100 blogs in 100 weeks. I stopped because I just… didn’t want to do it anymore. I didn’t feel inspired. I didn’t feel like I had much to say. I was just jabbering away, exchanging half-baked thoughts for 9 likes and a watered-down shot of dopamine every week.

But I miss it.

See, I do write for a living. My job — weird as it sounds — is as a LinkedIn ghostwriter. I write content for founders and CEOs, primarily in finance and real estate. Sometimes I’ll write emails for them. Sometimes I’ll write case studies. I wrote a book for someone once. But mostly, I stand at my desk with my walking pad set to 1.6 MPH and I write 35 LinkedIn posts a week.

Then I turn around and tell people I’m a writer.

That’s like feeding a dinner party with Easy Mac and telling people you’re a chef. Or waving a towel in front of the smoke detector after you burn that Easy Mac and telling people you’re a firefighter.

Writers write. And as much as I love my work, I don’t think writing LinkedIn posts really qualifies me as a writer.

So I think I’m going to start writing again.

Last time I did this, I set that goal for myself: A blog a week. It worked. It forced me to be consistent, forced me to create, forced me to build the habit. But now that I’m publishing 7,500 words a week in various nooks of the internet (that God-willing you’ll never be exposed to), I feel comfortable saying the habit has been formed. So I’m just going to write when I want to write.

British author Somerset Maugham once said, “I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at 9:00 sharp.”

I hear you, Somerset. But you chose to go by “Somerset” instead of the name your parents gave you — William — so forgive me if I’m having trouble taking your advice.

I’m going to write only when inspiration strikes. Or, rather: Whenever I decide I want to.

If you followed along at all during the first two years of this blog, you know I wrote a lot of what could be classified as “life advice” or even “self-help.” Once again, there is great irony in this. You’re taking self-help advice from a guy who had a mid-life crisis at 28 and didn’t even use the opportunity to buy a Corvette.

So moving forward, I don’t know what this is going to look like. I’m inspired by my friend Jamie Yonker — the best writer I know — who tells stories about her life in a way that feels like David Sedaris narrating a trip down memory lane: Taking snapshots of her experiences, making you feel like you were there, and leaving you wondering how someone is able to make you laugh and then choke up in the span of 15 seconds all by putting a few words in the right order.

So, I don’t know. Maybe this blog will start to look a little more like that. Maybe it won’t. But it won’t look the same as it did before.

Usually when I write something, I start with the thesis. What do I want my reader to take away from this? What am I writing toward? What’s the point of this? Right now, I have no idea what I’m writing toward in this blog. Right now, there is no point — other than to announce that I’m writing again — which is sort of like when Geraldo Rivera announced he was quitting Fox News and people were like, “Wait, that guy is still around?”

Right now it’s 7:16 AM on a Thursday and I’m just writing. Because it feels good. And because I like it. And because I want to.

And maybe that is the point?