Eric Protas - Writer & Recovery Advocate

There's a version of this post where I explain everything in one clean paragraph. The pivot, the reason, the theme, the grand vision. But I've learned to distrust that kind of writing — the kind where everything makes sense from the first sentence and nothing costs anything. So let me try a different version. The real version: I came back to writing after a season when most of what I'd built — professionally, personally, structurally — fell apart in ways I didn't fully anticipate and couldn't entirely control. What followed was a few years of quiet reconstruction. Less visible than what came before. More foundational than anything I'd done in my adult life. I kept journals. I drafted things I never posted. I wrote letters to people I didn't send. Writing was the rope I held onto when the current was strong, and I don't say that to be dramatic — I say it because it's the truest description I have. Eventually, the season shifted. Recovery does tha...