French philosopher Rene Descartes famously wrote: ‘I think, therefore I am’.

I accept that premise – it always seemed to make fundamental sense to me. But what follows from the fact that I write?

I write, therefore…I’m a writer? I don’t see myself as a writer.

Writers study writing, they develop a method and hone their craft. Writers don’t just write – which is what I do. I just write what I think. Or, more accurately, I write about the conscious and socially acceptable aspects of what I think.

Writers care about their prose, they work hard to choose their words and craft their phrasing. I do some of this too, of course. But I do it based on my gut feeling and experience, not any conscious method or intention – other than to communicate my thoughts and feelings.

I frankly find it surprising, and flattering, when people compliment my writing. What I hear them saying is ‘I like the way you think’ or ‘you’re an insightful person’ – which is more about my thinking than my writing – rather than ‘the way you string a sentence together captures my unspoken aspirations and fills me with joy’. That’s the way I feel about some of my favourite writers – Michael Chabon, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, and Doris Lessing, among them. I could never imagine writing as well as them – from the complexity and profundity of their thought to the way they sculpt rich fictional worlds out of their real-world experiences.

Yet, I don’t think I’m devaluing my writing in acknowledging this. We each do what we can do and the more we do it the better we get. These days, I find myself writing for the same reasons I used to sit and strum my guitar and sing by myself – it’s therapeutic and expressive and ultimately grounding.

I recall now, as I write this post on the topic of writing, my days as a philosophy student and how I marvelled at the way philosophers tried to use language – with varying degrees of success – to define previously undefined and perhaps ultimately undefinable ideas. When you start thinking about reality from every perspective and then are charged with having to communicate those thoughts to others who do not inhabit your mind, you have to learn how to describe your feelings accurately and in a way that others can make sense of. It seems, from where I sit now, that I learned how to write by reading philosophy – and writing philosophy papers.

However, with this realization, I am suddenly struck with the notion that I may have come full circle. Perhaps, I am a writer after all. I am not a fiction writer, nor will I ever be. But I have always been inquisitive and I have learned to write in a philosophical style that some people find refreshing and enjoyable. Of course, along the way I developed a healthy, if somewhat wry and subtle, sense of humour which comes in handy for buffing up some of the rough edges of reality.

I don’t think I’d ever want to write for a living. But I do feel, more and more, that writing is an important part of living.

I write, therefore I am a philosopher – that is, just a guy trying to make some sense of my existence.