I’ve a job to do. I don’t know how to, I’m not sure what it is, yet it’s urgent. Who assigned me I’ve no idea, but the command is compulsory. Some days I don’t want to, it’s too hard, but that’s not an option, so I shush my grumbles. That I’m likely to fail is no excuse for not trying. As for an avid alpinist, this mountain was set here for me to scale. I must – because I must. And if I perish in the attempt, well, what a way to go!

I loathe my vocation and love it. I feel cursed and blest. This reaction is not uncommon, I think, among those possessed by a driving dream. For one person it’s to be a rock star, for another to run fastest, for another to compose. I lamented in my business years I did not love money more, for avarice is a great motivator: few vast fortunes were amassed by accident. I did not love money. I loved… words – and how, miraculously – infrequently – they combined to make music. I loved words so fervently I did not want to saddle them for a living. I wanted to write, not be “a writer” – for if I accepted that label, I would play to win, pant to sell more books than anybody, more even than the Harry Potter lady. I would not be able to restrain myself, for competing is my rampant obsession, a sickness really. During my career years, I published pleasant pieces while cramming reams in private, to protect my words from the corruption of my ambition.

Retirement freed me to write “full time” (curious expression). I wondered whether I had it in me, or if my spigot would cough. One must write about something – maybe I’d run out of things to say.

The opposite occurred. The more I wrote the more I needed to. Daily missives only partly sated this mad need to express. Words poured from me in the millions – confessions, confections, words of all sorts – filling volume after volume. I scribbled faster than I could edit. My copiousness dumbfounded me – twelve hundred words a day felt too few. I did not write for a market – that would be as it may; nor did I will myself (I never obey orders). I wrote because I had to, as one must prick a blister or vomit, no choice, get out of my way.

This need is pathological. I wish I wrote less – what to do with this spew! How will my poor heirs cope with these groaning shelves! I could dump the lot, I guess, as Emily Dickinson directed for her trunk of poems – but don’t want to. There may be good stuff in there! My prolixity humiliates me. Write less and better, I coach myself, then go outside and play. No dice. Ask Jane.

Shrinks might point to some deficiency in my psyche that elicits this response. No doubt. I prefer to credit love. Writing is how I hug life, taste it, tousle it and, well, make love to it. I haven’t lived until I’ve said. My need forces even dog-pal Henry into utterance, who could care less. I live to write, love to, and every day bless my chance. I live in love – of Jane, Henry, my loved ones, notions, words – every day a lovefest, how lucky is that!

Friends ask if I’m writing a book. I suppose so, but that’s not what’s driving me. Love’s driving me – and if no book results, that’s OK too. The joy of doing is bliss enough.