I started this blog in March 2012 as a first year in college. Ever since my sophomore year of high school I had been told by many a well-intended adult, "Writing! Writing is the essential to your future successes in whatever field you pursue!" So, like a good Wendy I started writing for the newspaper and I liked to think of myself as an artistic person so I wrote for the arts section.
And it was rough.
I remember spending lots of time writing my articles only to be told by the upperclasswomen who were the editors that it wasn't quite good enough. They deleted whole sentences that I thought were some of my cleverest and most witty and they thought the pieces I spent the least amount of time on were, in fact, my best. But when I called my dad nearly in tears because I thought these older writers were being mean to me, all he told me to do was to practice. Writing is an art so it can be mastered but not unless you put sufficient time into it.
And so I created this blog as a place for me to practice my craft. I was not unfamiliar with the idea of having practicing my writing. I had a blog in middle school, another one in high school and have maintained journals on and off since about 5th grade. Actually now that I think about it, one of my friends rolled her eyes when I debuted my blog in high school because I used to love writing really long and self-absorbed notes on Facebook about my 'experiences'. But this time was a little different. I think I was hoping that it would help me in all aspects of my life that needed writing of some sort. Little did I know that writing a scientific research paper is much different than writing one for an architecture course but I digress.
I didn't really have any one particular topic in mind that I wanted to write about. Even though I was an Arts Writer for the paper, I just wanted to write about things that interested me: new books, movies, news stories or even just ideas. It wasn't a travel blog, it wasn't a DIY blog and it wasn't subject specific. I didn't really want the blog to be about me per se, but it was just about anything and everything that came through my mind. I wanted to keep stimulating my brain to become a better seer of the world.
It's a little embarrassing to go back and read some of the things I wrote a couple of years back. Mainly just because I thought I had answers to all of life's problems when I know that I didn't know anything about anything (and still don't). But I have to envy my past self because she was always full of ideas of things to write whereas now I find myself stopping myself a lot more before hitting that "Publish" button. There are so many things to consider before I actually send any writing out into the Interwebz. Is it too provocative? Am I over-sharing? Is this too personal? Is this even interesting or relevant? Do I even know enough to write about what I'm writing about?
Writing here is a lot harder than I initially thought it would be. It's different from the writing I do for class and equally different to what I write in my journals. More recently I've been looking to other sites for inspiration be it XoJane or Thought Catalog or even other peer institutions' newspapers. But one of my goals for this New Year is to keep writing and to write more often. And really, I don't have a specific goal in mind other than to maybe try to have more experiences and learn about things worth blogging about.
It's a journey without a destination but I'm excited nonetheless.
Thanks for coming along for the ride,
-T
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