Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Dust Yourself Off and Try Again...

I gave up on blogging a while back after I decided no one was really reading anything I had to say. That or people were reading, but just didn't comment on my boring musings of my life. Sometimes writing something everyday got to be more of a chore than anything; however, I really do love to write.

It was always a passion of mine when I was a kid to write. I could sit in front of a keyboard and put my little imagination to work and whip out a story in an hour. I'd write family newsletters complete with a weather forecast (courtesy of someone like Paul Douglas or Ken Barlow of course) and a comic section. I was encouraged most to write by my 9th grade english teacher, Mrs. Born. She was a huge fan of my writings and always told me what a wonderful style and dry sense of humor I had in my pieces. She even went as far as giving me an award at the 9th grade awards ceremony saying I'd be the first published writer of my graduating class.

Well all of that passion and imagination kind of went down the drain when I got into my senior year of high school and college and was forced to write endless scores of research papers and legal summaries for some law classes I took. Doing something like that for 4 years really sucks any and all ambition and cleverness right out of a person. There was a brief stint when I studied in Paris my junior year of college when I had to write all my papers in french. That kind of lit a flame under my derriere for a while and made me feel like a true writer since most great authors/thinkers from the last century were french. Simone de Beauvoire. Jean Paul Sartre. And as much as I hate reading her work - Marguerite Duras. However, as much fun as writing en fraincais and pretending to be philosophical while sipping my espresso in a sidewalk cafe was, I was quickly brought back to reality by my french professors form of love and praise for my work. When I say love and praise, I mean breaking a student down mentally and verbally to the level of an infant, building them back up, and then ripping them a new rear end. All the while scolding you in french and smelling of bad cheese and body odor.

But, I overcame that little speedbump and managed to pump out some of my best work my senior year of college via my political science senior thesis and french portfolio. Writing got put on the back burner after college and I kind of missed writing the dreaded research paper. All those years of loathing and spite for writing those late night papers actually tured out to be a secret love of mine. Thus, inspired by some friends who had blogs and one quite notable blog by Stephanie Klein called Greek Tragedy (which, if you haven't read her blog before, I highly suggest it, and check out her new book), I began my own blog here.

I've been really bad at keeping up with this, hence the two month gap between my last post and this one, I am making a resolution, a la Miss Klein's once upon a time, to write every day. Whether it be something as little as 5 sentences or as long as a novel, write every day. We shouldn't let laziness get in the way of something we're passionate about. A passion sets us free from everyday stresses like work and gives us a chance to enjoy life. Writing is a passion and I shouldn't let it die because I feel like I have nothing to write about. If I'm passionate about it, I'll find something to write about.

Stay tuned my friends. Hopefully you'll see great things on this blog!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would LOVE to hear a story about how COOL your sister Allison is.