Once, in my early thirties, a friend told me that if she knew she would never get married, she would prefer to just die right then and save herself the effort of more lonely years.  I was shocked, since it had not once occurred to me to think such a thought about my own life.  But there was something tickling at the back of my brain, trying to help me remember that I had felt that way, once.  About…what?

When I moved into this house that I love, I wanted to surround myself with only those things that were meaningful to me.  This necessitated a gigantic purge of stuff that I had held onto long past the time to let go.  Thankfully, my friend Sue came with her large truck.  We sorted and hauled an unbelievable amount away — two full truckloads of books, for example.

There was one storage tub I refused to open until Sue had driven away.  In 1973 I was given my first diary.  Since then, I have been a regular, if episodic, journal keeper.  I have never had the discipline to write daily, so there are few journals which are full cover to cover.  Also, I’ve experimented with a variety of styles, both in my journal writing and in the physical journals themselves.  The one thing they had in common was their place inside a large storage tub which had been unopened (except when I tossed another one inside) for years.  Once the rest of the house was in tip-top shape, I had an overwhelming urge to open the tub and start reading.

And there it was, in a hardcover bookkeepers account log.  An entry from my sophomore year in high school (1977):  “The only thing I want to do with my life is write.  If I knew I couldn’t be a writer, what would be the point?  I would just lay down and die right now.”

So now you know: the heart of why publishing jenion has been such a joy.  And what lies behind the decision to take on the postaday 2011 challenge.  I am doing it for the love…of writing.

(Gentle reader:  If you have something you love this much, I would genuinely like to hear from you about it — please share by posting a comment.)