Dear February

 “She'd become an English major for the purest and 

dullest of reasons: because she loved to read.”

~ Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

Dear February,

Though I was determined to start this year off on a different foot when it came to writing, I’m struggling greatly with both motivation and inspiration.

When I was a little, I used to read and write all the time. I was the kid that followed my mom in the grocery store, nose in a book, using my peripheral vision to ensure I didn’t follow a random stranger down the next aisle.  I was the kid that could be found in the corner of a crowd-filled room with a notebook and pencil, scribbling away what I no doubt thought was the next great American novel.

Now granted, my wide ruled notebook paper wasn’t necessarily filled with good material. I wasn’t some eight-year-old prodigy. But it was something I enjoyed doing in my spare time, and I rarely felt creatively stymied. I just wrote whatever popped into my head.

Writing continued to be something I loved throughout grade school and into high school. Even through a good part of college I still enjoyed writing... though by senior year I was definitely feeling the first effects of burn out.  Then an attempt at grad school happened, and that’s when I suddenly watched as this incredible thing that I had loved doing all my life was snatched out of my hands, strangled to death, burned, and its ashes thrown into my face like confetti. 

Once writing (and even reading) became almost entirely research focused and mechanical...once the creativity and personality was stripped away... once it was no longer a hobby but was instead something I only associated with stress, pressure, grades, and a future career that promised more of the same, my passion for it died. 

Well, mostly dead anyway...

 (source)

And though I left grad school on good terms (and in order to save my sanity), I felt like it took years before I even touched a book again. Not even for pleasure. It just wasn’t relaxing anymore to read after having homework assignments that consisted of examining hundreds of pages of Diderot that could have been written in Greek and still would have made more sense to me.  As for writing, it has taken even longer. I wasn’t inspired at all, but even when I was, I couldn’t make myself write anything down.

But eventually, I started picking up books here and there again.  All kinds of different books ranging from chick lit to self-help and best sellers to historical fiction.  And it was like I found that small spark I had when I was a kid, the bookworm who hid under covers with a flashlight so my mom wouldn’t know I was staying up past my bedtime reading. It’s almost like you don’t realize just how much you miss the feeling until you have it back. 

It’s time to start writing again.

It’s time to no longer allow the stress and bad experiences of my past to keep me from doing something I could still be enjoying in the present.  I’m the only one standing in the way of doing something I used to love.  Writing may never be a career path for me, but it can still be an amusing past time.

So, to force myself to put pen to paper (metaphorically speaking), I begin my journey anew with this blog.

“Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like 

jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. 

What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! 

Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. 

There were going to be people in it. 

Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world." 

~ Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot