Purpose IV: Author

(Another in our continuing series of "Let's Make a New Life", based on Craft the Life You Want: Creating a Blueprint for Your Future at artofmanliness.com. Today's exercise, based on prioritization of roles, is to define a purpose for each role).

Today's purpose: Author.

Oh, I've been looking forward to this one.

Outside of very few other things in my life, this is the one thing that I would like to do a great deal more than I do - and, I might add, the only one which I have an even very small chance of getting renumerated for (swordsman doesn't pay so well these days).

As I've mentioned numerous times before, I love to write. I really do. Not just because I would someday like to make money at it (I would), but just for the sheer joy of putting language together. It helps me keep my sanity by allowing to pour my thoughts and frustrations out onto a sheet. It also (occasionally) gives me a sense that I can actually help someone think, perhaps gain a little joy or perspective, or even just say "Man, that was well written".

So what would I like my eulogy to be from readers?:

"TB was an author who wrote with passion and excellence. He wrote in such a way that he called out the best in readers - in imagination, in purpose, in changing their lives. He entertained and taught and glorified God through his writings. By reading him, lives could change."

Ironically, I feel a bit silly as I write that. That's a tall order for anyone in their lives for anything: calling out their best, changing lives, entertaining, teaching, glorifying God. It almost reads as the statement of a teacher.

Maybe that's the latent teacher in my bloodstream coming out from where it's been hiding all these years.

And even as I write this I feel myself starting to pick on this already in my brain: "Write? You? Where will you find the time? And audience - authors publish books based on who they're audience is and how big it could be? Your audience is who?" The thoughts I face every day before I sigh, get dressed, and ramble off to the bland life I seem to despise so much.

But that's it, that's my purpose in writing (even writing here, as foreign as that sometimes seems). My deepest desire is that somewhere in your life, Dear Readers, you would be changed by something I have written.