Figuring Out My Why...

A Monday hello.

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash

One of the questions I’ve been asking interview subjects a lot lately is why they do what they do. What is their why? Why, in this climate of political strife and social media madness, with A.I. breathing down their necks and paychecks being slashed at every turn, do they make art? Most of the time the answer is something along the lines of, “I don’t know how not to.”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my why. Why I continue to work in a field (journalism) in which the pay gets smaller and the work gets harder by the day. Why I try to adapt to social media’s vague, ever-changing algorithms in the hopes that someone out there will see what I’m doing and pay it some attention. Why I continue plugging away, day after day, even when my ego is bruised because the attention never came.

While out on a walk this morning I contemplated my why and came up with a few thoughts:

I do it for the conversations—the deliciously rich, often funny, sometimes emotional, a…