I just saw this, and began to read all the wise responses, but couldn’t even take time to finish them because I am pushed, propelled to respond to you, Jack Preston King, the “person who writes.”

Unlike you, I never had the discipline or courage to write for the public during my “earn a living” years.. I gathered a few rejection slips, as we all do, and wrote ferociously in secret, but I constantly told myself, later, when I “had time,” then I could write.

And then I DID have time, and Medium was there, and suddenly I didn’t need to collect rejection slips and send of envelopes full of hope and SASEs. Now everything I have been yearning to say could come out.

But it was lonely at first, and I questioned myself. I almost stopped, thinking it was just another hobby, another daydream of mine that I was about to lose, and no one would even care. And then, to my surprise, I found that something I wrote could actually speak to a person like you. You commented deeply and encouragingly, and even tweeted my work through your network (I have none). And then I could keep writing.

So in my view, if you hang it up tomorrow, if the work is draining you too dry, you will still be creating and contributing. You have already earned your place in the hearts and minds of thousands.

Your stories and ideas and teachings are not ephemeral; They linger like a Z-pack does… they have been published forever in the people for whom you’ve been writing.

And it’s the people who matter, right? Just as it is your personhood that matters. Because whatever you do, and whatever you choose to share, you are always and ever a person.

A really, really wonderful person.

Who writes.