Editor’s note: This is Part 5 of a five-part series, “R-E-M-E-W,” built around five essentials I’ve come to believe are worth making part of everyday life. Each installment explores one of the practices I’m learning to prioritize as I figure out what it means to live well.
Part 1: Read | Part 2: Eat to live | Part 3: Meditate | Part 4: Exercise | Part 5: Write
I spent two decades writing about the wrong thing.
That’s probably a strange thing to say about a career I once called my dream job.
For nearly 20 years, I wrote about basketball. I chronicled the hopes, dreams, successes and failures of other people. I interviewed them, watched them compete and told their stories.
I loved the work.
But along the way, I became good at documenting other people’s lives without doing the same with my own.
I couldn’t really see beyond it. I was busy chasing the next story, the next game, the next deadline.
It wasn’t until I launched Money Talks that something changed.
For the first time, I was writing about something much closer to home: me.
Money Talks has become my outlet. More than that, this space has changed my life.
Writing two columns a week forces me to slow down and pay attention to my own life. I’m documenting what I’m learning, what I’m getting right, what I’m getting wrong and what I’m still trying to figure out.
It has made me more accountable.
I keep better track of my money. I pay closer attention to how I spend my time. I think more about whether I’m actually accomplishing the things I said I wanted to accomplish.
Putting those things into words makes them harder to ignore.
That’s part of why I write.
It’s a release.
There’s something different about taking a thought that’s been bouncing around in your head and putting it on a page. It stops being this overwhelming thing you have to carry around. You can see it. Challenge it. Do something about it.
I’ve started doing that outside of Money Talks, too.
I journal for 20 minutes whenever I wake for the 5 AM Club. I write down to-do lists because jotting down things I need to do brings me structure, peace and a plan of attack.
Lately, I’ve even started experimenting with stream-of-consciousness writing. No structure. No destination. Just writing and seeing where the words take me.
Writing helps me decompress. It organizes my thoughts. It gives me direction. When my mind starts filling up, I can write it all down and work through it.
There’s another benefit I didn’t expect.
Writing makes me pay attention.
When I know I’m going to write about something, I experience it differently. I notice the details. I think about why something bothered me. I recognize when something made me happy. I start connecting things that might have remained separate.
That has changed the way I see Money Talks, too.
It isn’t just a place where I share what I know about money. It has become a record of what I’m learning about life.
Money is still important. It always will be.
But the more I write, the more I realize that money is only one part of the story.
How I spend it matters. So does how I spend my time. How I take care of my body matters. So does what I put into my mind. The people I love matter. The things I’m building matter.
Writing gives me a place to keep track of it all.
That’s the biggest difference between the writer I was and the writer I’m becoming.
For 20 years, I was paid to tell other people’s stories.
Now I’m taking ownership of my own.
I don’t always know what I’m going to discover when I sit down to write.
But I almost always feel better after I do.
