Good for the soul?

I remember one professor I had in college. It was a writing course. And the professor was a writer. A damn good one at that.

But he said that for the longest time, he had trouble thinking of himself as a writer. He'd call himself a journalist. Or a reporter. Or something. But not a writer.

I think about that sometimes. Not really in the sense of whether or not I'm a writer. I don't have any trouble calling myself a writer. Heck, I'm the slam champion. Whether or not I'm writing anything of value to me is another question.

But there's another way I look at it too. I run a fair amount. Or some folks might say I jog. But, the deal is, am I a runner? For the longest time I didn't do any races because I knew I wasn't a runner like other people were.

At this point, I haven't even really been running on average three or more times a week for a year. But I'm close. I'm almost there. I almost feel worthy of calling myself a runner.

I raise all of this because of a conversation I had in Spokane.

I met someone there who I'd heard amazing things about. A masterful painter, sculptor, songwriter, musician, etc. An artist of the highest order. A man named Jeff Wiens.

Interestingly, when I asked him what he did, he said he was a computer programmer. But what about all these amazing things I've heard about your other work, I asked.

Well, he said, he hadn't really been validated for his artistic pursuits. He wasn't getting paid for that. But, all that was good for his soul.

Which leads me again to the question, what am I doing that's good for my soul? Then there's the other question: is my job bad for my soul? Am I in a good place spiritually? Am I running for the right reasons? Or the wrong reasons?