Yes, to me writing is not just an artful form of expression, but can it greatly enrich and benefit exhaling. If you just take it all in and keep it there, you’re bound to impregnate your mind with endlessly regurgitating thought, worries that can make you restless, even up all night.
Writing is the exhaust valve, the exhaling part of breathing, getting things off your chest so you can sleep contentedly, not have thoughts continually imploding.
My stress-relieving exhales are my weekly blogs from http://www.maddenmischief.com, like this latest one about Catholicism in turmoil: https://maddenmischief.com/2026/07/19/vatican-excommunicates-bishops-declares-their-society-a-schism/ It has helped me so much to stay sane and sober for the many years I’ve been regularly and religiously taking my exhale medicine, writing!
So, don’t just have thoughts, give them birth, write them down and share, especially those that enlighten and even better, inspire!
Writing is an outlet I discovered early on when I majored in journalism at Temple University and then went on to study communications at the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania while working the sometimes-hazardous nightshift as a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer, one night even getting my ass kicked covering an angry mob’s protest.
My writing skills then landed me safer but saltier, then cushier jobs in PR including whisking me up to such a nose-bleed level as vice president, assistant to the CEO of NBC who was then my comedic genius buddy Fred Silverman with whom I worked also at ABC on the many hit TV series he corralled and I promoted.
Eventually all the nose-bleeding led me to launching my own PR firm TransMedia Group which rose to one of the biggest headline-grabbers for some of America’s largest companies right up until today, with my talented and resourceful daughter Adrienne Mazzone now running the show as its illustrious president, while I’m her ever helping her dad, working from home CEO.
That’s right, I’m always writing, whether it’s manuscripts or blogs to disseminate, articles to publish or news releases to spread for capturing media headlines across the country. These fingers of mine are ever busy, working the keyboard on my laptop just as my violinist dad, William Madden’s fingers could control pitch by pressing down on strings and my brother Don Madden’s fingers could move brushes to create full-page cartoons for Playboy Magazine, one a month for 50 colorful years.
Yes, exhaling music, art and publicity runs in the family enabling us all to sleep well, including my dad and brother now up in heaven where they’re probably still creating.
So please don’t horde your thoughts. Don’t just keep them to yourself. Write them down. Share! And let writing help to make this a better, more well-read, more educated and inspired world.
Author, inventor and publicist Tom Madden is CEO of TransMedia Group, the prize-winning PR firm he founded when he left NBC, and today his daughter Adrienne Mazzone is the firm’s president.