The truth

I’ve been feeling the need to write more lately. Ever since I started this blog I all but abandoned my regular personal journal. A couple weeks ago I tried to pick it up again and started typing an entry about all the stuff I’m not comfortable sharing here. I wasn’t able to complete the entry and wound up losing interest in everything I was was saying. The entry is just sitting on my hard drive as an uncompleted orphan and I have no idea if I’ll eventually finish it or if it will find its way to my recycle bin. Once you start something like that you pretty much have to see it through. Like many other things, I’m good about getting started but not so great at finishing.

Yesterday I joked that I dropped my Thursday class because I don’t want to miss my TV. That’s only partly true. I love “Heroes” and am looking forward to the 2007 incarnation of Jamie Sommers, but the truth is I just could not keep up with the assigned homework. It was a business communication class and was all about writing proper memos, resumes cover letters and lord knows what else. I wasn’t going to stick around to find out. I thought I’d have fun because the class was, technically, a writing class. I was wrong. It was stifling and unbearable.

I like the other class I’m taking very much and in it I am able to exercise my creativity. It is also a writing class, but one centered around page layout and design. So far I’m pretty excited about what we’re doing and what we’re going to do. It has me thinking about things differently and is just the thing I need right now. My entire work day revolves around data entry. I sit in front of a computer and type and type and type until my hands ache. It’s a wonder I’m able to keep up with this blog the way I do.

When I was finishing up my undergrad degree, I was working at the factory. I remember a conversation I had with with my adviser about the job. I was embarrassed to tell him what I did for a living. It seemed so blue collar and I wanted him to think of me as someone who could potentially some day be a peer. Perhaps not a college professor, but someone who made a living from writing.

My adviser surprised me by saying that the factory was probably the best place for me if I wanted to be a writer. He advised that if I wanted to write, to write stories that is, I shouldn’t aspire to find a job that would involve a lot of writing. He was afraid a writing job would deplete my creative energy. What I was doing at the factory required little or no thought, and if I didn’t have to think about the work I was free to think about other things. What he said was true, because since I started working at the university I haven’t written a single short story. Granted, I’m not writing for a living, but data entry can be a bitch and the last thing you want to do after spending 8 hours in front of a computer is go home and spend even more time in front of the computer.

And yet here I am in front of the computer.