Why I Write (and my 2020 WOY)
“Sometimes you have to write to figure it out.” — Charlie Yarnak
“That which is most personal is most universal.” — Carl Rogers
Writing, what an interesting thing. Taking thoughts in our head and putting them down onto a piece of paper (or typing them onto an electronic screen).
This thing called writing was something I used to despise. It was the subject I was least interested in, and the class I, ironically, created the most mischief in. I was a numbers-guy, through and through. Addition, multiplication, derivatives, integrals, algebra. These were logical, these were my friends. What good was there in understanding words and how they go together and what makes a good sentence, there seemed to be little practical use for me at the time.
Now, this isn’t a story where “one day, it all changed…,” in fact, it didn’t all change until years after I began writing.
My Journey Into Writing
The story began when I made the decision to pursue a career playing professional golf. The year was 2014 and I was approaching the end of my college career, my graduation, and life after education. With growing up in Kansas and then moving to California, there were people I loved living in many different places. I knew that, as a human-being, my communication reach was limited, and there was a critical mass of 5-10 people that I could truly keep in the loop as I voyaged into the professional ranks.
This problem needed a solution, and the timing couldn’t have been better. Only a few years prior, the avenue of having a personal website became accessible. Through wonderful companies and platforms such as WordPress and Squarespace, your average joe like me could now purchase and create a website for all to see. This was the solution I was looking for — one that allowed me to transcend my human limitations and stay connected to a much larger community.
Thus began the journey of: Thane Ringler Golf (or, TRGolf for those of you who remember).
After several months of work, my own, personal website was up and running! Now, the only thing I needed to do was let others know and update my tournament results and I was good-to-go. Of course, there was a slight wrinkle in my plans…
What I quickly came to realize was that the people who chose to follow along didn’t really want to just see my scores and tournament results. What they really wanted to know was the story behind the numbers—the actual happenings of what transpired to produce the numbers on the scoreboard. And here was where I had to come to grips with the long-standing, self-limiting belief… that I was in fact, not creative.
In my mind I was obviously a numbers guy. I excelled in math classes, earned a degree in accounting and finance, started my own “business” as a professional golfer, managed finances and a budget… creativity was not a part of my self-assessed personality. Not only was I “not creative,” I didn’t enjoy writing, at all! Papers for school had always annoyed me, and this association pervaded into all arenas of writing. Yet, as I began to see the proverbial writing on the wall, I started to recognize that I had already begun to dabble in writing during college without even realizing it.
One of the practices I started in college was journaling after every golf tournament. This became an essential practice for creating clarity around lessons learned while also helping those lessons to actually be learned and not wasted or forgotten. And as I faced this identity-dilemma around not being a writer, I realized I had already dipped my toes into this pool of writing and, in-fact, had begun to enjoy the process and therapeutic elements within it.
That is how I began to write: simply journaling after every golf tournament I played in.
Slowly but surely, over the years of my professional golf career, I began expanding my writing into arenas beyond tournament summaries and into ideas and other areas of personal interest. And, before I even realized it, I had become a writer…
… and I believe you should too.
Why I (Still) Write
In thinking about why I still enjoy and pursue writing years after my professional golf career ended, I realized there is a “trinity” of elements that all hold equal weight in my mind and in my heart as to the motivation behind the words that I type.
This three-fold motivation is:
For curiosity
For clarity
For others
For Curiosity:
I write about things I’m curious about. Currently, I have a notebook (on Evernote—a note-taking app I highly recommend) that is purely for writing ideas. Throughout the week, I will spontaneously have an idea that intrigues me, a thought that captivates me, or an observation that sparks further questions or insights. If I have my phone or computer handy, I will jot down the basic premise of the idea and some supporting points, questions or inferences. This idea will sit in the notebook until I feel the time is right to fully unpack it within written form. Not only does writing stem from curiosity, but it also creates curiosity. Through writing more consistently, I have become a much more curious person! And I believe curiosity is a trait we would all do well to grow in throughout our entire lives.
For Clarity:
Nothing clarifies my thoughts or ideas than writing (or speaking) about them. When we have an idea, typically it is raw, unproven, and instinctual. The necessary process that follows is to test the idea with what we know to see what is of merit vs. what doesn’t hold up from our initial thought or reaction. Writing is one of the best ways to clarify and purify your ideas—not only because it forces you to flesh out the idea in a more concise way (along with the implications of that idea), but also because it allows others to come alongside and examine your ideas from their perspective, adding further refinement and clarity (or sometimes confusion and dissension). Clarity is worth its weight in gold, and writing is the most affordable way to get it.
For Others:
Ultimately, I write because I want to share with others. I believe that life is meant to be lived to the fullest and intentionality is what allows us to do that on a daily basis. Writing, to me, is a means of exchange; a way to transfer ideas from my brain into the brains of others; a small drop of water in the ocean of change to hopefully produce growth of good in a world that’s always in need of it. I want to do my small part in that chain, and one of the ways I get to do that is through the mental-lifting of ideas through refinement of thought, that can lead to others receiving and incorporating those ideas in their own lives.
My 2020 Word of the Year
So, now that you know why I write, let me end by sharing (writing) a bit about my 2020 Word of the Year.
One of my favorite practices that began in 2017 (thanks to my sister), was the tradition of choosing a word for the year to come in place of the commonly-prescribed New Year's resolutions. Choosing a single word has a few distinct advantages over one or several resolutions. First, a word is small enough that you can easily hold onto (remember) it for an entire year. Second, a word is specific enough that it can actually shape and influence your mindset and intentions throughout the year. Third, a word can apply in a broad-enough way that it is flexible enough to change with you as you change throughout the year to come. And finally, a word is meditative in that it is often intuitively discovered, meaning—it is more felt than thought, when choosing what word it will be.
My 2020 WOY is: Adventure.
ADVENTURE
This year, the word that came to me as defining of what’s to come is: Adventure. So much of the coming months and year involves change for me—and lots of it. With change comes tension. One of my favorite quotes on change is from George Leonard who said: “Resistance is proportionate to the size and speed of the change, not to whether the change is a favorable or unfavorable one.” Resistance is a natural component of change.
One of the ways to embrace change instead of resisting is to view change as an adventure. Adventures are unknown, can sometimes be perilous, and often end up being different than we expected. Yet, adventures are thrilling, exhilarating, surprising, and full of joy.
As I walk forward into 2020, I want to take each step with full faith that it will lead me to the next step that must be taken while enjoying the adventure each day along the way. This will be the idea I return to over and over again, as I commit to the practice of adventure. It’s an idea—a reframing—that allows the ups and the downs along the way to be viewed as a natural part of the roller-coaster of adventure, not some deadly turbulence that’s constantly shouting “danger!.”
There is no doubt in my mind that how I view this year in light of the idea of Adventure will shift and shape into a much different form by the end of 2020, and that is the beauty of what’s to come—it’s always unknown. This is the beautiful dance called life; it’s an adventure. And I cannot wait for all that’s to come.
