I pay a few hundred bucks a year to maintain this website so the fact that I don’t write in it at all is pretty embarrassing. I guess I’m paying for a dream that one day I won’t have to work in my current job, that I’ll be able to share my writing talent (the existence of which is still up for debate) and I won’t have to work for some corporation.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy my work, where I do technically write. I am grateful for my job and (most days) enjoy it. To my bosses, if you are reading, please don’t fire me.

But that work is ultimately for the publication, not for me. To a certain extent, it does represent me, but in other ways, it’s limiting, especially since it’s focused on the concert industry and the audience is people who are much more knowledgeable about it than I am because, well, they live it. So most of the time at work I try to find useful things to say without sounding like an idiot. Actually, that’s probably most times I speak.

I’ve been paying for this website since I returned from Haifa because I’ve always felt that, if I just took the time to share my ideas, they might be helpful to someone, or maybe multiple people. My ultimate career goal has always been to be a columnist, to be able to analyze current events from the lens of my studies and service both internationally and locally in neighborhoods throughout California.

I’m no Steve Jobs, but I know that the best way to build a brand is through your products. So if I ever want to be paid to do the job of writing analysis and opinion pieces, I had better start demonstrating I can do it by writing, right? Right.

Yet the only thing that has compelled me to write has been the 200th anniversary of the Birth of the Baha’u’llah. A centennial celebration like that only comes once every 100 years, so, suffice to say, if I wait for the next one, it might be time to give up the dream.

Yet even with all that knowledge, that in order to work towards my dream, I need to write, I haven’t done it. Why is that?

Perhaps it’s the same reason that I don’t write any my friends, some of whom have literally saved my life, others of whom have left a lasting impact that have made me the man I am today. Not only do I not write on the website I pay to maintain, I don’t write to the people that have changed my life for the better, even though I think about many of them frequently, when something jogs my memory or I see a photo or post on social media.

From my childhood, to adolescence, to my youth, to my still (technically) young adulthood, there have been so many friendships that have affected me profoundly. Many of them are contacts in my phone, I could literally call them whenever I’d like. Yet I don’t. I’m connected to so many of them on Facebook, all I would have to do is just type a few sentences to initiate a conversation, yet I don’t. I could write them letters, providing them with a memento of my thoughts for them, that they can have as long as they like, yet I don’t.

None of my friends or extended family members need my thoughts to live their lives, but I’m sure many would appreciate the gesture. Yet I don’t write them. I purport to care about them, I do think about them, but I never write. Why don’t I write?

I think the answer to both questions related to my career and my personal life are the same: It’s overwhelming.

I’ve had so many ideas for pieces that might be able to positively influence discourse. I’ve had so many moments where I’ve remembered friends with a sense of deep gratitude and love, some whom I’ve spent countless hours with, others whom I’ve had only a few interactions with. The thing is, I have so many ideas and there are so many people I feel I should write, it’s a lot of work to try and start on. There’s literally more than a thousand people on my Facebook friend list, and I care about them all to an extent or I wouldn’t have added them. How can I choose to be in contact with some and not others?

How do I recall all the ideas for pieces I’ve had, or flesh them out thoroughly enough that they capture the complexities all issues worth talking about inevitably entail?

That is signing up for so much work and decision making, it seems easier to just entertain myself in the spare hours I get every once in awhile.

And yet, here I am, writing again. The reason being, simply, that I’ve wanted to and I finally decided to do it. It seems like a simple but profound truth that we have to live in the present moment. I cannot write everything I want to say. I cannot, and will not, see or speak to most people I have loved again. But I can write about some things and be in contact with some people. And at any moment, if an idea comes, I mustn’t make excuses for laziness.

If something is important, one must make time, and a lot of time the best moment for action is the present moment. If a thought comes to us, we can choose to hang on to it or let it go. I think up to this point in my life I have let too many ideas go. It would be cliché to say “no more,” but perhaps I will hang on to a few more, no?