It has been 2 months since the last post. I have a pile of excuses for the silence, most of them valid. A move across the country. Our lives in boxes, stuffed four high in our new home. Digging into the old job, which continues to change with the moon. Bills to pay, a computer to unpack, a tiny table to repurpose as a desk. New bank accounts, new phone numbers, new addresses, new commute, new weather, new everything.
I often start a new writing project just as things are getting interesting. Puberty. High School. College. College 2, the Study Abroad version. They all start with high hopes and schedules and manifestos and a new notebook, and end a few pages later. My intention is to chronicle the interesting times in my life, but then life becomes too interesting to spend time writing in a journal.
Life has been very interesting lately, like the curse. However, I’m hopeful this latest writing project will outlast the interruptions. This time, I have an opportunity to write regularly. I’m riding a bus to work, which gives me about 25 minutes to write a single page. The time limit is excellent for avoiding procrastination and just writing. The page limit keeps me from rambling. The pen and paper keeps the words flowing forward, rather than constant editing and re-editing. It is good practice for a short and sweet blog entry, when I’m faced with the unbearable freedom of a text editor.
I picked a black plain soft notebook by Moleskine. If I had to do it over, I may have gotten the traditional cardboard notebook; it is flimsy enough that I have to use my laptop bag as a writing surface. I’m 32 pages into the 192 page book, writing 4 or 5 pages a week, so this one should last until the summer.
I am a little worried about what the other bus riders think about me. Whenever I saw someone writing on the bus, I usually assumed they were insane, a few missed pills away from violence. Why would you write in public? What could you possibly write about?
I write about my job, about my family, about ideas that I want to explore. When thoughts are tumbling around my head, they just tumble. When I write, everything I’ve been thinking and worrying about and mulling over takes up, at most, half of a page. Those thoughts seems much bigger and numerous when they are circling around my head. However, the rest of the page gets filled with new ideas, even some solutions, that would have never come from silent contemplation.
So, yeah, the guy writing on the bus is insane. And now he’s updating his blog!
5! 