Writing 200 Blog Post 7 - Being a Writer

I am a recovering writer.

For years I thought of myself as a writer, destined for that life, and framed my current life through that lens. And because I didn't really write all that much, that lens made me see myself as inadequate—how can one be a writer without writing? I couldn't, and now I'm realizing that's okay. 

There's a sentiment that's common (and controversial) in the running community, which I found in writing as well with a Google search, that all it takes to be a runner (or a writer) is to run (or write). Though I have neither the desire nor the energy to tell other people what they are or aren't, this definition simply doesn't work for me. "Runner" and "writer" are nouns, not verbs. They're statements of who I am, not statements of what I do. I think of myself as a runner because  I have committed to running to a high degree and for a long period. Barring schoolwork, it occupies the longest part of my day. I also bike occasionally, but that doesn't make me a cyclist. I sleep and eat every day without defining myself as an eater or a sleeper. Nor does scribbling the occasional short story or poem—in my estimation—make me a writer.

In his famous speech, Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre said that "In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait and there is nothing but that portrait." This relates to the existentialist idea that the actual existence of anything—including human beings—precedes and defines its "essence." That is to say, my actions and character don't follow from "human nature," but my actions define my nature. This line of thinking results in a radical understanding of responsibility, as people are at their core choosing at every moment what to do and therefore who to be. From this point of view, defining oneself based on feelings—like the feeling that I could be a writer, or that I'm predisposed to be one—is dishonest if those feelings aren't backed up by action.

And not only is drawing identity from an interest that's held so loosely inauthentic, but it also leads to a self that is split in far too many directions. "We are what we repeatedly do," as the saying goes, but if every action I take becomes an identity then I am no one in particular, my being spread too thin between everything I want to be, imagine I could be, or think I ought to be. If I can't discard the chaff and define who I am, my existence is lost in a homogeneous mixture of every action, wonderful and mundane.

I'm not going to stop writing completely, though as I transition to a Kinesiology major I do anticipate doing it less. However, I'm going to let go of the burden of disparity between my misplaced self-definition and my actions. In doing so, maybe I'll find more frequently the freedom to write for no one and for nothing.