Inspire me

I recently started sharing some of my writings with a good friend of mine. Best I can tell he likes them, or at least he seems to like them. After reading through a couple, he asked me “why aren’t you still writing?” I’d stopped writing around sophomore year in college. I had plenty of assignments to work on for classes plus I’d decided to pledge a co-ed fraternity and was in a relationship. Those things took up most of my time and when I did have free time, I could usually use a good nap. That and I wrote when I was assigned a topic or when something inspired me to write, and nothing has really inspired me to pick up a pen lately. Which led to a more difficult follow up question: “What inspires you?”

This one stumped me and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. What drove me to write and why doesn’t it anymore? I started looking back through what I had written and thinking about why I wrote it. There were a few pieces about pain, neglect, hurt, rebellion. I guess I feel I’m past most of that and I’ve been too blessed in life to feel I have much right to complain about the few unpleasant blemishes. Others were about love, passion, lust. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a relationship that was significant enough to bring about any strong emotions like that. And all the other pieces? Random tidbits based on close friends, special events, silly thoughts, assigned topics.

So now I’m questioning myself. Sure, life has changed a lot over the years, but is it really that different? I have friends now that are closer to me than ones I’ve ever had in the past. Life has been a pretty big adventure, I mean hey, I up and moved 6,000 miles from home. I’m surrounded by interesting places, people, and events. So what is missing? What inside me is gone, broken, or temporarily misplaced? I don’t want to say I’m hopeless; I believe things will get better than they are now. I don’t want to say I’m bored; there are plenty of interesting things that happen in a given day. Maybe it’s that I need someone to write for. Maybe I need someone that looks forward to reading my words. Maybe I just need to find some reason to make it matter more to me, to someone. I’m not really sure.

I guess I’m still left wondering why I don’t write, and even more importantly, why am I not inspired?