Writing

I used to be a fairly decent writer, I think.  I used to love to write about everything.   I had a journal, I loved getting to write compositions for English classes. I especially loved it when the teacher liked what I wrote and even better, when he or she read it to the class.  I can remember my seventh grade teacher, Mrs. Benevides, reading one of my creative writing assignments to the class and laughing while she read it(I wish I had a copy of whatever I wrote, because I don't remember what the assignment was).  That made me happy, to have made someone laugh with something I had created.  I wasn't the most popular person at my school, and in my near future was a big fight with a girl named Carol who WAS the most popular person at my school(I told her that I couldn't fight her because she had halotosis, but she went home and looked the word up.  Oops.), but for that brief moment, all was right with the world. 

I also remember that I took a creative writing class in 9th grade, and made the mistake of getting up to turn in my assignment when the teacher was talking.  I was listening to what she was saying.  Most people CAN walk and listen at the same time, after all. But this teacher blew a gasket and started yelling.  She gave me a failing grade on that assignment, too.  I can remember being so angry looking at that 'F'!  Not my first experience with the whole "life isn't fair" concept, but I didn't do any extra writing after that for a long time. 

In high school I slowly got back on the writing wagon and signed up to be a reporter for the school paper.  I started writing some poetry, a little here and there.  (I stopped keeping a journal sometime in high school, I don't remember when. I just got busy with life, I guess.  I also didn't want my college room mate to see me writing and ask questions. I suppose I was afraid that she would give me an F.)   But in college I experimented with more poetry and other aspects of writing, including some erotica.  I got brave enough one day to send one of my poems about relationships to Cosmopolitan to see if it might get published, since I'd seen other poems in the magazine.  I got my poem back, not with a business-like letter saying 'thanks, but no thanks', but just some obnoxious comment scribbled on the top of the page in pencil.  Something along the lines of "this sucks donkey balls", only more Manhattan-ish.  I didn't really care that they didn't like what I had written, art being subjective and all that, but their form of 'rejection' was pretty crappy. 

I went back to writing just for myself, and hoarding it all like Smaug, never letting anyone else see it. I did submit one poem and it was published in a school district magazine that highlighted the artistic talents of teachers.  Most of the writing I've done over the past twenty years, however, has been work-related, clinical-based, and not very creative.  There's really only so many words you can use to describe an IQ test.  I've tried starting up journals again and again, but I just don't have the time to be consistent about it, and I was feeling guilty if I didn't write every day.  Something had to change.  So I did. I started this blog.

I still like to write, I've discovered.  I'm incredibly nervous about anyone else actually READING it, and a little jealous of people like my friend Jill who is incredibly witty on her blog.  My purpose in writing my blog, besides to use my brain more creatively, is just to write for the fun of it.  No pressure.  If I don't manage to get to a computer for a couple of days, it's okay.  I hope to learn how to add pictures and links and stuff, but it's not a 'have to' sort of thing.  And if nobody but me reads my blog, that's okay too.