As with any exercise, writing comes from an internal muscle of habit that weakens without constant use. I have let that muscle go untested for a while, and I realize that I miss it. Taking up this exercise again is strange, being so old and new at the same time. It is like talking to a stranger who seems to know you.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of talking with another writer while I was out grocery shopping at Whole Foods with some friends. We were looking to pick up a loaf of bread when this sweet woman standing next to us started asking our opinion about types of potato bread; she couldn’t quite decide which to choose. This turned into a long conversation about personal preferences ranging from bread types to lifestyle types and goals.

One of her goals was to write about her parents’ lives, both of whom are physicians. She had mostly done her work in freelance satire, sports, and biographies until this point. I wondered why then she wanted to write about her parents, given her general curiosity about the world, and about my friends and I. She was eager to tell us all about the project, trying to gain insight from our perspective on the medical industry as today’s hopeful entrants and compare it to her parents’ experience. There we were, shopping for groceries and sampling the Wednesday wine list, and over the course of an hour we had become celebrity specimens to this unique individual.

I was surprised to be so personally involved in the conversation given our surroundings. As a kid, grocery shopping was all about the list. You get what is on the list, and then you go home. Home was the more important place, not the strangers you could meet or the stories you could hear while out. Consequently, I felt uneasy talking with this lady at first. However, the more I listened to the stories about what it took to be a doctor several decades ago, and the more I saw how involved my friends were in listening to those stories, the more I was reminded that I needed to be open to absorbing this golden nugget of time. I was being handed an opportunity to find out about a life completely different than my own, a chance to expand my horizons.

All the same, I was battling a nagging voice in my head, snarling “You need to excuse yourself and get out. You don’t belong here in this conversation. You need to be doing something else.” I recognized that was a voice belonging to an entity that would keep me perpetually and confusedly hopping from moment to moment in life. I decided that that voice would take away my ability to focus and not be distracted.

In the end, I decided to avoid distraction, even if I had other impending duties at home. Hearing another person’s experience was home in that moment. And because of that moment, I have begun to write again, to share my story again, doing something that I love. Stories like this woman’s, shared in a love and innocence that grows experience, remind me to stay passionate, to say hello, Stranger, as though the stranger is my friend.

Writing, hello again.