There comes a time in every writer’s life that they realise they need to be writing, most times just for the sake of it. It doesn’t have to be anything remotely resembling profound either, it just needs to be written. It feels like it has to come out. While this may be true at the time, it is also a common event to revisit something that was written during these moments and find that it is absolute shit.

Doesn’t matter. It just needed out. I’ve read great words and thoughts from great writers, and I’ve seen and heard interviews where they’ve imparted small bits of wisdom, passed on some of their techniques and advice on how to use what can be considered talent. The best and most consistent advice that I’ve ever heard was the simplest as well.

Write. Just write.

I get that a lot, that urge to write. While it’s usually an urge to actually create something, writing satisfies it in a way that few other things can. Drawings have a way of never feeling completed and tend to take too long for my taste. Building or making something is nice, but strangely dissatisfactory when I’ve finished, and cleaning is, well, cleaning. A productive use of my time that does nothing for my soul.

The day I realised that I was a writer was when I felt that I’d done something to make my soul feel better. It’s cathartic, to say the least.

Something that a writer needs, other than the urge to write, is somewhere to write. A place that they can not only sit and let their thoughts create a story, or at least a pattern, but somewhere to put it when they’re done.

I haven’t had a place like that for a while. Sure I’ve got my little corner of the house, a hidey-hole where I can sort of shut out the World. Saving stuff down as Word documents in a folder called “writing” isn’t working for me anymore. There are lots of things that aren’t working for me anymore.

I’ve built this blog into something that I suppose I had intended it to be originally, yet no longer have a use for. It was fun to write things that made me laugh, that made me feel, that made me think that others out there should share in this. The feedback I received was overwhelming to the point of life-changing.

I’d gone out looking for something, I suppose, and I found it in spades. Suddenly my sense of purpose with this… writing place, was less clear. It’s an understatement to say that I’d lost my focus, and this finally made sense when I applied some hindsight and saw what it was that I was doing with my writing, with my blogging. I’d found what I was looking for and, once I found it, didn’t know what to do after that.

I’ve purposely kept my real life quite separate from this blog, and have had to find ways to help build my ever-expanding online presence without using this site and it’s juice, so to speak. There’s only so much that you can hide though, from the online world, and only so much that paranoia can protect you from. There comes a time that you realise that they’re not actually all coming to get you, and you don’t really have to worry about how much they know about you.

Like my old man used to sometimes say, “If you’ve been good, then you’ve got nothing to worry about.” Don’t know if I’ve necessarily been good, but for whatever I have been I make no real apologies, for whoever it is that I am today has been built upon that, and I reckon I’m pretty pleased with who I am today.

So, as the finely sliced division between my original online persona and my actual online self starts to fade away, I realise that I’m going to let it. I’m not going to purposely bring the two crashing together, or even push the issue, I’m just not going to be as fervent at keeping them separate and distinct. Part of that means putting some parts of me out there that I normally wouldn’t share with this audience that I’ve built over the years.

Part of that means accepting that people are, just like me, multi-faceted, and don’t necessarily have to have things the same as they’ve always been just because they’ve always been that way.

My name is Judd, and I’m a writer. I’m 33 and married to an amazing woman that read this site one day and started an unbelievable string of events. She had two kids before meeting me, they’re mine now, though the law and some crappy people disagree. We’ve made a kid of our own, and her level of awesomeness is higher at 12 months than most people ever get to in their whole lives.

About a year ago, I quit my job. I quit my job for no real reason other than I was sick of working for someone else. I was tired of putting up with great quantities of shit just so somebody else could benefit from my energy and efforts. I started my own business doing web consulting and web marketing and am writing as much as I can in my spare time under the misguided notion that I’ll someday have enough material for a book that more than 12 people will want not only want to read but pay to do so.

I’ve been needing a place to put the stuff that I’ve been writing, meant for a book or not, and I’m going to put it here.

I hope you like it.