There are many reasons to the question ‘why am I here?’ More than I’ll probably cover in the course of this piece.
When I was child, writing was a form of expression for me. The first thing I really remember writing was a poem after my Grandmother passed away. I read it not too long ago and while it wasn’t bad, it wouldn’t win any awards. But my mom, it was her mother who passed, was really touched by it and put it as part of the In Memoriam in the local paper. I was 12.
In high school, I have a few memories of things written, mostly for school assignments. But it was then I started to write for me. I distinctly remember a piece (again a poem), that was very similar to a song by Living Color. It was that experience where I started to think a lot more about the genesis of ideas, how there is a finite number of them and it is how you present them that makes the piece or breaks it.
This was also the time where I what I wrote became private. It was for me. And I didn’t share it.
Finding My Voice
In university, I started writing for the student newspaper. My university was home to one of the best student run newspapers in the country and I was a part of it.
I started in an earlier semester (February) and was writing as a volunteer. But that wasn’t enough for me so I jumped in as Circulation Manager, which was a glorified paper boy, but I was on the editorial board. Not only was I was writing but I was able to shape the content.
By the time I actually began full time studies in my first year, I was the Assistant News Editor. And damn if I wasn’t good at it. That was one of the happiest times of my life. It was hard, tiring and time consuming. But rewarding as hell and one of the highlights of my life.
To this day, the best professional compliment I have ever received came in that capacity. Unfortunately, it is framed around a tragedy.
Towards the end of the school year, a murder occurred on campus. It was a production night. The tip came in from one of our sports writers who lived in the residence. Production nights are all hands on deck when it came to the editorial staff and a few volunteers. I grabbed the photo editor and together with the Managing Editor we made our way to the residence from our office on campus.
I don’t want to recall the gory details of the story. This isn’t the place for that. But it was bad night. Fueled by caffeine and adrenaline, I couldn’t remember all of the details of that evening. The press assembled, both local and national, and were very cooperative with each other. Sharing information and following up on tips and leads.
It was at that point I was given a sheet of paper with the name and address of the victim’s parents. I handed it to the managing editor and said ‘if you want a quote from them, YOU call them. I am not contacting them. Not tonight”. He said “it’s your story”.
Holy shit. I’m in charge of THE story on campus that year.
I may have mentioned that production nights were a whole different world. We published weekly, so every Wednesday, 14 of us were huddled in the ‘The Sil’ offices laying out the paper. Jacqueline and I had just laid out the front page when the call came in. Needless to say, that wasn’t the layout that was printed. Nor was I involved in the new layout, other than having the whole front page to write.
So it came to be around 10am on a Thursday morning, after having caught an hour or two of sleep on the office couch, a knock on the door woke me up. I unlocked the door, and a natty gentlemen in a suit is looking for the executive editor of our little paper. He’s early, and asks if he can come in and sit while waiting to him. When he introduced himself I realized he was an editor at the Toronto Star . He’s there to interview our executive editor for a job when the school year ends in a few weeks.
He sits on the couch I vacated while I sat at my desk. On the table in front of the couch sat the hot-off-the-press latest edition of the paper. He picks up a copy of it and begins reading the front page. I know he’s reading what I wrote.
He couldn’t have been half-way through the front page when he says ‘Helluva night you guys had last night’ and turned his attention back to the paper.
When he’s done, he says “Who wrote that story about the murder? That’s the story I wish we ran”. My story. The editor of a major daily newspaper, maybe the biggest in the country, wishes he ran my story instead of the one they did.
“Your looking at him,” I replied, trying to hide a smile. The circumstances of the situation were horrible. But I’ll take the compliment.
Losing my voice
When my academic career came to an end, so did my public writing career.
Entering the working world, my writing was limited to emails, business proposals, and memorandums of understanding. Hardly stimulating. Hardly creative. And hardly anything like what I really enjoyed doing.
It was then that I began to write as a creative release again.
Not much from that era has seen the light of day. I was doing it for me. A way to get out things I was processing, or didn’t understand. It helped to put it into words. But no one was seeing it. Nor is anyone likely to. Not much has survived from them until now.
But I was doing it. And I was learning more about myself and what I want to be doing, even if it’s only a side hobby.
I lost my public voice. But I had a strong inner one. And it was itching to be heard. In the last 7 years, a few things have been guiding me back to writing in a much more public manner than what I had been doing. And this is why I’m here.
The Newsroom
HBO’s hit drama The Newsroom, debuted in 2012 and ran for 25 episodes over 3 seasons. It is never talked about in the ‘best TV show ever’ debates, but if you’ve ever worked in a pressure filled deadline fuelled occupation, it is must watch TV.
The character of Will McAvoy sucked me in on the first episode with his response to the question “why is America the best country in the world?” Spoiler alert: it isn’t. And he pulls no punches as to why it isn’t. He provides stats, not opinion. He provides historical context, not conjecture. In the response, he says that America used to be the best country in the world, but no objective examination could say the same today. But by acknowledging the past, he shows it’s possible. The world is missing a lot of that today. People are incapable of looking at things objectively, of seeing any point of view of their own. I dare say that the world is the most polarized it’s ever been.
In the rest of the episode, the crew behind the scenes of the news show being produced is running against time to not only get the story, but to get the story right. The tension is palpable. From the newest intern to the hardened and seasoned veterans, you can feel the anxiety and pressure as each second passes. The research, search for sources and pressure to get it right. To tell a story. And to get the story right.
As I said, if you haven’t worked in this type of situation, it might not resonate. But for me. It did. Big time.
In 2018, I rewatched the whole thing. Almost every episode sparked something in me. While the show is centred around a television news show, which I had no desire to do aside from maybe being behind the scenes, it did make me want to be part of SOMEthing. I wanted to write, I wanted to research. I wanted to tell a story. And I wanted to tell it objectively and tell it right.
While the fire was inside me, the desire to execute wasn’t there yet. Chalk it up to not being confident in my ability to write, or maybe thinking people won’t care what I have to say. Or maybe it was just laziness. Maybe it’s a combination of all of that. Whatever the reason, it didn’t happen.
Last month, I watched that first episode again. And the same fire inside me sparked. My heart pounding. It was ignited again.
Chuck Klosterman
I’ve been vaguely aware of Chuck Klosterman for years. We are about the same age. That is almost where the similarities end.
Up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t realize that I was jealous of Mr Klosterman.
When I say that I was vaguely aware of Chuck, I mean that I had seen his byline and read pieces he’d written for various magazines. I’d also read a couple of his books. But that was sort of the extent of it. He was a writer. I enjoyed his work.
When my fiancee and I moved in together, our book collections became one. She was vaguely aware of Chuck Klosterman too. Luckily, the books she had weren’t the same ones I had read. So I became slightly more aware of him.
In 2022, he released a book called The Nineties. I was excited about this book. Not because he was the author, but because I very much came of age in the 90s. This book was very much a nostalgia trip. And it was good.
But after reading it, I rarely thought of Chuck Klosterman. Occasionally, I’d see the titles of his books on the shelf in passing. But that’s it. However, in mid-May, his name seemed to pop out more from the shelf. I read. A lot. And I wasn’t happy with what I was reading. And his name, practically glowing from the shelf, made me look up books I hadn’t read from him. The first was What if we Are Wrong? The concept was interesting. It takes a look at our modern world, and what it MIGHT look like in the future, and uses examples of how things from history look today. And what we view as important now, might look very different with the passage of time.
Upon completion of this, I moved on to another of his books. X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century.
This is where I realized I was jealous of Chuck Klosterman.
The fire was burning from watching The Newsroom. Maybe slowly smouldering is a more apt description. Regardless, it was there. And here comes this book. A collection of pieces he’d written on a number of topics for various magazines. There is no common thread, aside from the time period. Just random pieces on things that interested him. So he researched. And he sought people out. Most important, he wrote. This. Was. His. Job.
A persistent breeze was fanning the embers burning with me.
The Cafe on the Edge of the World
If Chuck Klosterman was the breeze fanning the embers. The Cafe on the Edge of the World by John Strelecky was the gasoline setting it ablaze.
The book, normally not something I’d go for, in fact it would likely be something I would avoid, sort of changed my life. It really opened my eyes to doing what I want to be doing.
As I mentioned, this is typically a book I would avoid. Not that I am against ‘self-help’ books in general, I have read several and apply their principles regularly. But upon reading the synopsis, this one seemed a bit too ‘out there’ for me. Sort of a mystical take on things. Born from what I can only describe as an hallucination by the author. However, the book was recommended reading by a colleague of my fiancee, who in turn recommended I give it a read. “It makes you think,” was her assessment. Also, knowing me as she does, she knew I was looking for my passion.
And the is the crux of the book. Finding your passion, or purpose for existing (PFE), as it is referred to in the book. The primary question being asked is Why Are You Here? And it doesn’t mean it in the physical sense. There was a part in the book where it stated to the protagonist, if you change this question to be personal (ie why am I here?), and you are genuinely interested in the answer, you won’t view the world the same again. Bullshit I thought.
It went on to state that some people aren’t ready to examine it. Some people are too busy, some are too close minded. And yet some others just don’t care. “There it is. The caveat. The reason it won’t work’. In my head I was thinking ‘it won’t work because it’s bullshit, not because I wasn’t ready’.
But there was one story told in the book, It centred around a fisherman on a remote island, and every day, he would fish, catching enough to feed his family. Then he’d spend time with them, and in the evening cook the fish he caught, then walk along the beach with his wife and children, watching them splash in the surf. It was all he wanted to be doing. And he was doing it.
An American businessman meets him and strikes up a conversation and he learns that he has a happy, quiet life. He asks about the fishing and if its good. The man states that is great. There is more fish than he could possible catch. The businessman, being a business man, states he should by a boat, then a fleet of boats, and sell his catch to others. And make a ton of money. Then he could sell the operation and retire and do what he really wanted.
“How long will this take me?” The fisherman asked.
“Oh probably 10-15 years to make it successful enough to sell,” Was the reply.
“And what would I do when I retire?”
The businessman looks at him and says “whatever your heart desired!”
“I like to fish. I could fish”
“Yes!” The businessman exclaimed.
“And spend time with my family, go for walks on the beach”
And it hit me. Like a ton of bricks. The fisherman was already doing what he wanted, whatever his heart desired. Why would he set that aside to amass a fortune to retire with, just to end up doing what he was already doing? The businessman was oblivious to this fact. As was I.
It was so simple. Why do you spend so much doing what you don’t want to do, in order to get to a point where you can do what you do want to do. Why not just do what you want to do?
So I asked myself the question. Why am I here?
First Steps
Maybe the book was right. Maybe I really did need to be ready to ask and answer the question. I’m not sure if I read the book last year if it would have had the same impact.
But these three things, all came together within the span of a month. The spark. The wind to fan the embers. The gasoline to set it ablaze.
And I learned the answer to why I am here, is to write. To tell stories. And to get them right.
It is what I want to do.
