What motivates you?

Someone asked me recently why I wrote. Or rather, what *motivated* me to write.

This was my answer:

I want to write to quiet the little buggers inside me that gnaw at my fingers and drink the liquid around my brain until I put words to page.

I want to write to express my core to those that care, to those that recognize, to those that breathe the way that I do.

I want to write to find my tribe, like a call into the universe, waiting for a response. “Am I the only one?”

I want to write so that I’m someone.

I want to write so that others know that I’m someone.

I want to write to make sense of the world, and of my own thoughts. (It often seems I can only think with a pen in my hand.)

I want to write because I am more me when I write.

I only hope that my writing touches someone’s life in a small way. And I don’t even care how. To make them laugh. To make them think differently. To make them breathe easier knowing that someone else doesn’t know either.

Honestly, when the going gets tough, I am motivated by external means. And not like “if I write this article I can eat the eclair from Sweet Life I just bought,” but more like, “Shit. If I don’t write this post and keep appliying for writing jobs, ‘so-and-so’ will be disappointed in me.”  And no, I’m not “doing for them,” I choose to be around people that know what my strengths and weaknesses are, and know that writing is something that I’m good at and is important to me. Therefore, they push me when I flag. And when I don’t perform .... I fear their secret disappointment in me.

What motivates *you*?