I’m coming to realize more and more that much of what I write actually comes from things I’ve carried inside me for a long time.
Some of them I only understood much later. Others I’m still trying to understand. There are decisions I’d make differently today, conversations I haven’t forgotten, people who’ve left their mark, successes that didn’t bring what I expected, and mistakes from which I’ve learned more than I’d care to admit at the time.
Perhaps that is precisely why I started writing.
Some things we carry not because we choose to, but because we don’t know where to put them down.
Over the years, we accumulate experiences, decisions, failures, successes, people we’ve lost, tasks we’ve completed, words we haven’t spoken, and questions we’ve never received answers to. On the surface, all of this often looks like experience. And it is. But experience has its weight.
The longer a person works, leads others, makes decisions, and moves through life’s stages, the more they carry. It doesn’t appear on a résumé, in business achievements, or in titles, but it’s there. Sometimes we carry it so long we no longer notice the weight. We grow accustomed to it and begin to see it as part of ourselves.
That’s why sometimes a person doesn’t need advice. They don’t need a solution either. What they need is a conversation where they won’t have to explain everything from the beginning—with someone who has been through something similar. A friend to whom you can say just a few sentences, and who understands even what you haven’t said.
Perhaps that’s exactly why it’s important to talk about things we usually keep to ourselves. Not because we have all the answers, but because somewhere out there is a person carrying the same burden and thinking they’re the only one.
Yesterday Milan Horvat wrote to me that, without my writing, he’d feel like a loner with his own experiences, insights, and life’s baggage—not knowing where to put it down.
I pondered that sentence for a long time.
When I began writing, I had no grand notion of what these pieces would become. I wrote what I’d been carrying inside for years—thoughts shaped by work, people, bad decisions, good decisions, successes, disappointments, and conversations that lingered much longer than I expected.
Over time, I realized that the story I carry is not mine alone.
Someone else has gone through something similar but couldn’t find the words for it. Someone had the same question but never voiced it. Someone reads a few passages and recognizes something they’ve been carrying inside for a long time.
Perhaps that is precisely why I write.
Not to tell anyone how to live, work, or decide. Not because I think I hold answers others lack.
I write because sometimes a single sincere thought creates a space where someone else can feel a little less alone.
Words may not lift the burden we carry.
But they can create a place where we can, at least for a moment, set it down.
If my writing can sometimes be that kind of place for someone, then I know why it’s worth writing.
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