On occasion I'm asked, "What's the best thing about being a writer?" This took awhile to answer because its a very layered question. There are always the obvious 2, 3 or 4 answers that will quickly come to mind, and many of those are common among writers. Creativity, expression and such. Then there are the buried answers that writers ignore, or are not fully cognizant of, like its muddled in some recess of the subconscious. Or it could be that the real answers are hard to face and we don't like to admit to them. After a long time of sitting on this question, my true answer crawled out into my full awareness and slapped me stupid. In all honesty, the best thing for me about being a writer is that it opened the doors to higher, more exclusive, elite, enclaves of the upper crust, well-to-do social strata, that I would not otherwise have access to. A type of "Starving Artist" syndrome perhaps, where it's okay to be a pauper because you're deep and you bare so much pain and emotion, and you have a medium to channel through and you so shamelessly express your catharsis that somehow others admire it.  Like it or not, there are social boundaries. You can't touch them, but you know they are there and they keep you in coach class, and standing in lines, and stuck in commuter traffic. But alas, being a writer gives you a pass to enter some of those elite groups. Not all of them mind you, but some. Like, for me, I was given a pass to enter and mingle and dillydally in the "Beautiful People" group. That's right. That's how I met my wife. I'll be Asperger honest here; had I not been a writer, my wife never would have given me a second thought. I never would have even landing that first date. It was my writing that wooed her, and touched her deeply. Stretched her thoughts and feelings, and got her attention. I'm not saying I'm a great writer, or even a good one, but I will say that at just the right moment in time, I strung together the right words for the right person and magic happened. I try not to overthink it. Anyway, that was the door into the major leagues and it was solely because of my writing and I unabashedly grabbed my writers pass and charged through. She is movie-star beautiful, artistic, intelligent, educated, spiritually attuned, and she graced me with her presence and attention. Jackpot. It was like I had climbed through the back of the wardrobe into another dimension. She reminded me what love is and what it isn't. She opened my eyes to The Infinite. At that point I surpassed Ringo Starr as the luckiest man in the world. Sorry Ringo, it came easy.