"You're a writer - you need to write!"

This is something new for me. I've wrestled with the idea of starting a blog for some time now.

Last night, while having dinner with my wife, I mentioned this idea to her. Her immediate response was, "Do it. You don't have to write every day."

But what do I write? Why should I write? What will writing accomplish? Who will read my writings? Am I writing for others or am I writing for myself? Do I tell others about my blog? Who do I tell?

The questions keep building and one question in particular keeps popping into my head.

Why do this???

Over the past decade a number of people, including my wife, have said to me, "Horst, you're a writer - you need to write." A former colleague went so far as to tell me I should be writing for publication!

I wonder.

• I wonder if I can discipline myself enough to write on a regular basis. 

• I wonder if I can focus my thoughts enough to put together something that a reader can easily follow. Can  I refrain from going off on all sorts of tangents? My mind is very good at doing that. Whether I'm reading, conversing, listening, watching a movie or participating in a discussion, my mind is always filled with a variety of thoughts, ideas and questions. Following a discussion at a Bible Study, a friend made the comment, "Horst, you're a tangential thinker." I thought I just had trouble staying focused. There have been a few occasions when my wife asked me (in the middle of a conversation), "where did you just go?" Another time my wife and I were talking about a movie we had just seen, and I told her that while watching the movie I was mentally comparing it to the book it was based on and a previous movie treatment of the story. She asked me, "Can't you just stay in the moment?"

• I wonder if I'll ever go back to completing some of my previous writings. They seem so irrelevant now.

 There's only one way to find the answers. I have to write.