I was a shy kid. I'd spend days behind my bed, my nose buried in a book. I took bites of prose like a starving refugee. And back in the 80s, with the Scholastic Book club inserts I'd carry home, my mom was always willing to buy a selection of each month, because she knew how quickly I would read them. I believe I read every Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary books, did reports on them at school, and imagined myself as one of the characters.
During fifth grade, we were introduced to creative writing. The idea of becoming the author, magically writing the prose someone else could read, completely flipped my mind sideways, and I immediately jumped at the chance.
Up until that point, my writing consisted of goofy little snipets of a 10 and 11 year olds life. Scribblings I can barely read now, from my younger self. I had picked out a cute little square "Cathy" diary (you remember the old comic of Cathy right?) to journal all my feelings into. I pre-dated it way into the future on the last page, February 26, 2015, my 40th birthday. That seemed SO far away. I'd be old, and so different by then. And somehow in my kid mind I believed I'd still be writing in that cute little diary. Telling stories of my husband, family, cute little life I had dreamt up, much like the stories of my youth.
But in 5th grade, creativity and the excitement of crafting a story was born. I still have those stories, bound by staples, on looseleaf papers tucked away in my personal stash of memories in our basement. Humble begins of my young creative juices. I went to a Catholic school from kindergarten through eighth grade so the stories took on images of being trapped in school, and reprimanded by the sisters, or thoughts on how life would be if Jesus was just a person in class with us. Nothing earth shattering, but it pushed me to come up with new ways to express characters. And they are a riot to look back on now. Oh the stories of those stories.
In later years, notebooks, spirals of angst from my teen years and college were filled nightly. Comments and observations flowed on the person who wronged me, the guy who wouldn't notice me, the friends who betrayed me. All the anger, resentment, hurt, flowed from a pen into my notebooks. I picked specific composition notebooks, a special pen, and watched the words encapsulated in those notebooks like a hawk for fear a roommate, my parents, would try to steal them by reading my emotions dripping from their contents.
In college, I elevated my game, and found poetry. The love affair of certain words, formulated with specific patterns and rhythms, allowed me to add further "feeling" into my words. I became enthralled with works of Keats, e.e. Cummings, Yeats. I became the little bookworm kid again, devouring verse and quotes I could live my life by. And committing my own style to my poems. Coming up with a cute notebook name, and oddly, (maybe for fear of the edits and never feeling comfortable enough with my ability within poetry) I always jotted them down in pencil.
But as I fell victim to the world of a full time job, my writing suffered. I quit journaling and pouring my heart on a page. Especially because my job became documentation (I was a technical writer in a past life) the idea of then coming home after putting together content or a user guide became less than inviting. I fell victim to writing becoming a "job" and so I quit doing it for fun, for release, for passions. The only time things awakened my need to jot down feelings were when I was left raw (the heartbreak of a lost relationship or friendship, the anger of a world event). Writing took a backseat to my every day life, not a way to balance every day life.
This too is ironic. As a child, I wanted to be an engineer, just like my dad. When my AP English teacher mentioned I had a knack for writing my junior year in high school, the idea of a job related to writing was planted in the front of my brain. I decided on journalism as major, but shifted gears after graduation. Vanity and lack of making money (even if was based on my passions) led to computers winning out. So while writing and my passions for learning through words, and using it to teach were still present, the fun of creating disappeared.
Cut to this very moment, this challenge, this push to jump back into writing on the suggestion of a good friend, and my love affair with letting the moods and thoughts pour through my hands like water has illuminated me again with the very thought of creating. Writing for me, as well as the consuming of others' words, has always kept my heart full. When it is absent, you can clearly see the changes in my personality and level of happiness. So I am excited for the new journey that diving back into the writing world has allowed me through this challenge. And looking forward to the new prose, new emotions that flow out of my hands as an older "shy kid" if for nothing more to allow the hunger in me for words, to again be quenched.
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