People say I am a friendly. I smile a lot, I like to chat with others, and I’m out-going. I guess you can say I am a pretty happy person (try not to throw up in your mouth too much).

But take a step into my head and you might want to grab a flashlight, a bottle of Prozac, and some turkey-jerky.

While presenting at the 2014 Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay, Robert De Niro said, “The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing: isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination and consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing and soul-crushing inadequacy. And that is on a good day.”

Bobby, you couldn’t be more spot on.

Thanks man.

The inside of a writer’s mind is always a wild ride. It is dark, creepy, and sometimes full of Snickers bars. The inside of my noggin looks like the love child of Edgar Allan Poe and Ruth Buzzi, but with a lot of grammatical errors.

You might get lost a few times down a rabbit hole ripe with memories of roller skating into a rose bush, getting caught for smoking cigarettes in the closet, or school kids laughing at an unfortunate bob haircut. These memories are usually followed with feelings of worry, fear, anger, and laughter. Then wine.

Not that I would know firsthand.

Writing is such an odd creature. It evokes so many different responses. Some people need it like a drug. Others use writing a form of release. It helps some organize their thoughts. Many are graded on how they write. Sometimes writing is boring. Sometimes my ass hurts after writing for too long. Writing can be pure torture for many. Just ask my seven year old.

The art of writing evokes the same emotions as the act of reading. There is crying, there is laughing, and there is, “This is the dumbest crap I have ever wrote/read. No one cares about a donkey’s point of view.”

However, for many writers, there is one subtext of fear: No one will give a shit.

Truth. And I don’t even like cats.

As writers, we give a shit. Too much in fact. Those sentence came from inside our heads, our hearts, and most often, the life experience of letting one rip during Social Studies. Not that I would know.

Writers write because we have a story to tell. If we don’t get it out, we might go crazy and accidentally buy too many bags of tortilla chips and multi-colored pens. Then stare into space for a while. Once again, not that I would know anything about that.

I write because I have to. Otherwise my head would pop off. I write because I think life is funny. It is ridiculously funny to me. It also really sucks ass at times. I write because I care, and hopefully someone will read what I wrote and relate to it.

So Dear Mr. De Niro:  I want to thank you for shedding some light onto the thought process of the writer and why we have to write that novel, short story, script, and yes, blog.

If we are lucky, someone else will give a shit enough to read it.