You’ve been goofing around with your blog and social media for a while now. And it’s been a fun creative outlet. Well, for the most part – live tweeting your vasectomy may not have been your best idea. But still, your friends, family, and even some acquaintances have had a few chuckles at your silly life, or maybe an observation you’ve made here or there. And up until now, you’ve pecked out your posts with little to no effort while sitting in waiting rooms, or waiting in sitting rooms, or killing time between a never-ending series of gymnastics drop offs and baseball pickups and conference calls about PowerPoint slide decks you don’t open. And you, and your phone, and your ridiculous dragon bracelets have bumbled along through your happy life with ease.

Then a few things happen in succession. First, you write an open letter to a pickpocket, and some folks really like it. And you are hugely flattered by the positive reception it gets. Some people share it, and strangers comment. And it’s humbling and gratifying, but also a bit disorienting. Because you typically know your audience, and they typically know you.

Shorty after that, your wife shares the post you wrote about the drowning man in 2014 with a Facebook group of about 30,000 doctor moms. And holy shit! Your blog traffic goes bananas. And you get thousands of hits in just one day. And your sleepy list of subscribers mushrooms.

You’re elated of course. But you also feel a vague and growing disquiet. After all, these new readers aren’t the fraternity brothers who have laughed at your writing since you were keeping minutes as their Recording Secretary. [“New Business: Brother A urged that we collectively apologize to our hosts for our antics at their party over the weekend. Brother B countered that we should “fuck that shit”. Brother C made an unrelated motion for a vote affirming that Brother D is an asshole. It was unanimously affirmed. (Brother D abstained.) Brother E forgot that you can’t make mom jokes in this crowd without getting your ass kicked. Brother E got his ass kicked.”]

To the contrary, these new subscribers are smart ladies (your weakness). More specifically, they are smart moms – which, if you’re being honest, is kind of your sweet spot in terms of target demographics. Well, that and folks who like poems about bacon. These driven, accomplished women who are juggling careers and children presumably don’t want to waste their time reading just any dumb crap. They surely want something worthy of their attention. Do you offer something worthy of their attention? The question lingers to vex you, like garlic breath or supply-side economics.

Then your 19th anniversary arrives. Sadly, your wife has to spend the whole twenty-four hours working in the NICU at the hospital. So in honor of the occasion, you write a long post about your early days of courtship. A really long post. A post that’s too damn long for anyone to actually read. If Facebook posts were animals, this post is Jormungandr, Serpent of Midgard. It’s a sentimental, self-indulgent, meticulously detailed account of your dopey love story, as told by a clown. Even as you’re writing it, you’re confident that it will only be read by desperate people trapped in elevators or the crazy ex-girlfriends who, like murder hoboes, are figments of your imagination. But that’s fine, because it’s really aimed at the one reader who is dearest to you anyway.

But you’re wrong. And the number of people who actually read the whole length of your War and Peace post (whether on your page, or the clone version your wife shares with the physician moms) staggers you. And you’re deeply touched, and dumbfounded, and utterly overwhelmed at the positive reception your post gets. And people are actually reading your stuff! Not just the quick, I-embarrassed-myself-at-Starbucks stuff, but the epic, here’s-a-formative-part-of-my-life stuff. And you don’t know how to even begin to process that.

In the following days, you become aware of something changing in you. Where once you easily tip-tap-typed whatever words fell out of your head, you are now strangely reluctant to do so. It’s as if you feel some newfound responsibility to raise your game. People are reading this, after all. And you find that you’re reigning yourself in, doubting whether what you write will be worthy. Simply cursing with alacrity isn’t going to cut it anymore. Nor will most of the topics that come to mind. Do people really want to read about your love of queso? Or the novel you’re currently reading (My Brilliant Friend)? Or the flashback you were just writing about the time a mugger maced you with pepper spray and stole your pizza? Well, maybe that last one.

Now that you’re in your head asking these questions, what about a broader one: why are you writing and posting at all? It’s not your job. Haven’t people heard just about enough from you? Are you trying to saturate the Internet with minutia about yourself, you narcissistic goon? There’s such a thing as overexposure, you know? They read your goofy love story. Now maybe you should just shut the Hell up for a while.

So you do.

And you don’t write a post about the conversation with your youngest in which he announces he wants to be a robber in China or Japan because they look awesome, and how you discover he has confused robbers with ninjas, and how you’re so relieved to hear that he doesn’t want to steal from people but just to murder them with swords.

And you don’t write a post about the LinkedIn recommendation a colleague asks you to write for him. [“So-and-so is a highly skilled and experienced lawyer, of keen intellect and laudable character, who says things that are meticulously considered, and who offers counsel that is wise. He is, however, an exceedingly loquacious man. He never uses ten words to express a thought when eight hundred and twenty are available. Enamored of his own voice, he can make conference calls last for days. I once prepared from scratch, baked, and ate a stromboli while he shared his thoughts about an arbitration clause. Whether you need legal advice or you’re just a lonely shut-in, he’s the man to call.”]

And you don’t write posts about your feminist critique of the term “room moms”, or how your boys break bricks (not video game bricks, the goddamn real ones), or the summer of ’95 when a massive 1970s television cabinet bit the end off your finger.

Indeed, you don’t write much of anything at all.

As time passes though, you gradually begin to feel like Tigger when he lost his bounce. It’s as if someone turned the brightness down on life. Before, you saw the world through a how-to-best-express-this-moment-in-words prism. And it enlivened your senses, and deepened your appreciation for the everyday stuff of life. You *noticed* things, in part because you intended to paint those things into word pictures. All the mundane facts and observations of your day were potential sculptures to be chiseled from blocks of stone. Well okay, maybe jokey sculptures, with giant bobble-heads and their pants around their ankles. But now, you’re seeing fewer potential sculptures. Mostly, you just see dreary blocks of stone.

And fuck. That. Shit.

The truth is, whatever your reasons for writing, NOT writing doesn’t work for you. And as you think this thought, you realize it’s always been true. Your middle school self wrote fictional biographies of roleplaying characters he would never use. Your pre-Facebook self spent two decades writing marathon daily emails to an audience of three dudes from your debate team. Whether writing skits for your law firm that lampooned the partners, or writing guest articles for your company newsletter that lampooned yourself, you have always felt compelled to cram words together into stories, or screeds, or online hotel reviews. [“Mordor. This place is Mordor.”] For good or ill, it’s what you do.

Maybe the question isn’t “what do people want to read?” Maybe the question is “what do you want to write?”

And of course it is, dummy. Do you ever tire of these conversations with yourself, you big wiener? And you grin. And you crack open a Salty Lady. And as you drink the brew with chips and queso, you tap this little number out with your thumbs. And what the F have you been waiting for?

And you really, really love queso.