Why I Write

My full-time gig is Firefighting. As sexy as cinema and television make it seem, it is not. Don't get me wrong; I love the job, and I love helping people. There's no money to be made in public safety, it has a plethora of stressors, and it can often be gross. Real gross. I'm talking nasty in about 100 different ways. Firefighters, nurses, cops, doctors, they all know what I mean.

We all have our crosses to bear, but again, I love my job, and it's the one I chose. However, it can occasionally leave me feeling powerless and without control. And there's the rub. I'm supposed to bring the control with me. I'm designated to bring order to chaos when I show up on the scene, and anything less than 100% success is a total failure. A pass/fail situation, if you will.

But sometimes the situation was never meant to be in anyone's control. Sometimes chaos runs amuck, and order was never on the table. Sometimes people don't want help. And sometimes you're left feeling like a well-intentioned but delusional asshole. A wannabe knight-errant, tilting at the mills while the rest of the world shakes its collective head. No matter how hard you try, no matter how much you prepare, it's merely a problem that can't be solved. And that is why I write. Because in this universe, the one you're sitting in as you read this, control is often an illusion.

There are many aspects of our universe one can influence, sure. A person can guide, steer, or manipulate individual variables, but as a whole? Everything in its entirety? It is utterly out of our control. Why? Because existence, this one at least, is a COLOSSAL fucking place. It's edgeless, infinite, and ever-expanding. It's a shitload of empty space, a few chunks of rock, some gas, and us (that we know of). And as far as time and space go, we humans are microscopic, and that can seem terrifying. But when I write, all of that falls away.

When I write, all the infinitesimal thoughts, feelings of isolation, and fear of the unforeseeable disappear. Because I'm no longer in our universe, I'm in my own. One where I have control over every single aspect. Every variable. Every possibility. A place truly of my own making. An existence where chaos can only thrive where and when I allow it to.

Every first letter is a new "big-bang." A singularity with an infinite number of possibilities and outcomes. Characters, places, events, and even the concept of time come from the tips of my fingers. I can travel anywhere in a matter of a few words. I can step in and out of existence at will. I control every atom, every carbon, every molecule. The very fabric of that reality comes from my mind, and that thought gives me solace in the sometimes vast indifference of this reality.