Day 2 - Taking an experience and writing about it
Honestly, this is a funny prompt, because I think much, if not most, of my writing is taking an experience and reflecting on it. Maybe it was all those freshman journals we were required to submit. The irony is, I'm pretty sure that the people reading our journals just wanted to make sure we weren't getting overwhelmed and sinking in our first semester (a worthy cause for the journals, I suppose), but I'm pretty sure they weren't looking for anything profound and - if they were - they almost certainly didn't get it from me.
This is a bit of a cheat for me - actually the freshman journals were too - because I'm a writer by nature. I started keeping a diary/journal at 9 years old and while it took me years to be consistent (and by consistent, I mean several entries a month), it's actually a beautiful thing to have a record of one's thoughts, hopes, fears, tears, heartache, and enthusiasms. It's certainly helped me grow emotionally, if not otherwise. Those journals have actually had a greater effect on my future than I imagined when I was writing them along the way. As I've gotten older, I have, I hope gotten a bit wiser and realized that the things I'm recording may not be for posterity as much as they are for myself - at times, I need to see that I have progressed and grown when I'm disappointed or discouraged with where I am; other times, I need a reality check, to see where I'm stuck so I can be open and honest with others about where I've been and my seeming inability (or unwillingness) to move. Writing about experiences, then, seems less altruistic than my younger self would have liked to imagine. I think I had some romantic vision of some younger semi-self, a daughter perhaps, gleaning from my accumulated wisdom and being able to relate to me at her age better than me across the chronological chasm of the present. Who knows? Maybe some vestige of that romantic dream remains. I would hope that all the time I've invested in the now 16(?) volumes that line my bedroom shelf will benefit more than myself.
There's something about writing that makes one a philosopher - it's tempting to try to tease the meaning out of the sometimes seemingly meaningless mundanities of life. Or perhaps it teases one with illusions of the poetic, assuming that alliteration will make one memorable to one's readers. For certain it can give one delusions of grandeur, particularly in this digital world, where all the world's a page and anyone an author. But all that aside, if my writing only benefits me, than at least the world will - hopefully - be a better place for it, if only because I've learned to know myself since one can't hide from one's own indelible musings, and that alone is no small triumph.
Honestly, this is a funny prompt, because I think much, if not most, of my writing is taking an experience and reflecting on it. Maybe it was all those freshman journals we were required to submit. The irony is, I'm pretty sure that the people reading our journals just wanted to make sure we weren't getting overwhelmed and sinking in our first semester (a worthy cause for the journals, I suppose), but I'm pretty sure they weren't looking for anything profound and - if they were - they almost certainly didn't get it from me.
This is a bit of a cheat for me - actually the freshman journals were too - because I'm a writer by nature. I started keeping a diary/journal at 9 years old and while it took me years to be consistent (and by consistent, I mean several entries a month), it's actually a beautiful thing to have a record of one's thoughts, hopes, fears, tears, heartache, and enthusiasms. It's certainly helped me grow emotionally, if not otherwise. Those journals have actually had a greater effect on my future than I imagined when I was writing them along the way. As I've gotten older, I have, I hope gotten a bit wiser and realized that the things I'm recording may not be for posterity as much as they are for myself - at times, I need to see that I have progressed and grown when I'm disappointed or discouraged with where I am; other times, I need a reality check, to see where I'm stuck so I can be open and honest with others about where I've been and my seeming inability (or unwillingness) to move. Writing about experiences, then, seems less altruistic than my younger self would have liked to imagine. I think I had some romantic vision of some younger semi-self, a daughter perhaps, gleaning from my accumulated wisdom and being able to relate to me at her age better than me across the chronological chasm of the present. Who knows? Maybe some vestige of that romantic dream remains. I would hope that all the time I've invested in the now 16(?) volumes that line my bedroom shelf will benefit more than myself.
There's something about writing that makes one a philosopher - it's tempting to try to tease the meaning out of the sometimes seemingly meaningless mundanities of life. Or perhaps it teases one with illusions of the poetic, assuming that alliteration will make one memorable to one's readers. For certain it can give one delusions of grandeur, particularly in this digital world, where all the world's a page and anyone an author. But all that aside, if my writing only benefits me, than at least the world will - hopefully - be a better place for it, if only because I've learned to know myself since one can't hide from one's own indelible musings, and that alone is no small triumph.
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