Last Night I Decided to Write a Blog . . .

Almost a month and a half ago, I finished my first year of college, and came back to my home of nineteen years. The weather wasn’t always hot yet, local strawberries were not yet ripe, and as far as I was concerned, I much preferred to remain at school, sitting out on the vast lawn known as Morgan field, talking for hours with the people who over one short year, I had come to know as my friends. But instead I found myself in my parents' house, with a lot of quiet, and no job for the next month.

I planned to write.

I have always had a fantasy . . . no, a dream, an ambition, of making it as a novelist, and now that a month of free time sat idly at my disposal, I thought, well, if I’m ever going to start writing the next great American novel, I might as well do it before my summer job starts. I had neither the willpower, nor the inspiration. Near the start of the four weeks, I opened a blank Microsoft word document almost daily and stared the screen, thinking of the characters that I used to write about before going away to college, and trying to remember what their faces looked like, and how they felt when it rained vs. snowed. I would usually stop trying to write after only a paragraph or so, feeling a lazy kind of tired, and I bit sick to my stomach. And then my summer job began. I haven’t tried to write even once in the past two weeks.

But last night, after watching a few hours of the sort of TV that’s just entertaining enough to fluidly and efficiently numb the brain, I found myself thinking about the writing dilemma again. They were casual thoughts; not enough to really dwell on. But I thought enough about that side of my identity to want to look through some of my old writing, from my high school years. I read through a few stories, and, to simplify a complicated set of feelings, I wasn’t sure if I still felt like the person who had written them. And then I realized . . . I truly had changed during this year, and to really write now, and to feel satisfied by the process of writing, I needed to find my voice.

This blog, According to Em is a tool in my quest to find my voice, and to develop and change it, when necessary. In case you’re wondering, Em is the first syllable of my name, my initials, and also the word me, backwards. I want to say what’s on my mind, and hopefully provoke thought and the creation of new ideas, in my own mind, and in the minds of anyone who reads the posts.

If you have read this far in my first post, then many thanks, and please comment, since nothing will give me more joy than knowing that this blog that I decided to start is being read and reacted to, whatever that reaction. Bye for now, and look for more to come soon.