I think writing is a genetic trait of the human being.  The habit seems to preexist the marketplace.  Writing is thinking, and thinkers find it necessary to put some things down, orally, on a rock, on the invention of paper.  Scientists scribble pictures, formulas, and it's the same thing.

Now and then you get some one who's either a sort of writing pure-bred, or one who is allowed the necessary focus, probably by demanding it.  Like a Robert Frost, who says things so clearly in a writer sort of way.  "And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep."  A depth of meaning invested in recognizable words.

Each week I would make a strange migration, back from the bar, the place of misery and empathy and pretended happiness and escape, difficultly back to the realm of words and books and poetry.  In so doing I would have to, to at least an extent, turn away from the world, from the city, from friend and personal life, to sit down, miserably enough, and do what felt to be my thing, slowly watching myself in the meanwhile turn into an older middle-aged man, yet without ever seemingly growing up.  The phone, the clock, the email, the appointment would be distressing.  I allowed myself grocery shopping, would avoid going out because it was too sad for me to see so many people at ease enjoying themselves in company, having fewer and fewer friends.  I took long bike rides in the most natural settings I could find to keep my mood up, not wanting to fall out of shape, and to clear my head.  I was out of synch with everyone anyway.  It cost too much to go out anyway, and who would have talked with me anyway?  It would have been nice if there was indeed some 'clean, well-lit place' where I could bring a book, a pen and notepad and sit amongst people, but they don't make such places as that anymore.  And what could I do but be unhappy with myself for letting my life come down to this, the sort of lonely unwanted bachelor one was always afraid of turning into.  I tried to keep my mind alive, curious, absorbent.  I tried to find the place and time to read, though often I didn't.

And then after one day, gritting through the misery of writing and retreating into a sort of stunned silence, not wishing to talk to many anyway, I would have to drag myself back to the place of friendships that left me behind, holding the bag of loneliness as people went off in their little units, leaving me high and dry.  And by that day when I had to go back, having placed my foot somewhere, as if to climb higher, I had to leave it all behind, and it was against many instincts and with a great sadness that I would go back to the old shop.  Oh well, maybe such is a place for a writer anyway.  He just has to maintain his honesty about what he does every week, and the uselessness of things.

Back to the place to be reminded of all my mistakes and character flaws, back to the curse of Ahab, back to the bar.