It has been about 7 months since I got back from travelling around Western Europe, and a year and a quarter since I started writing this blog. My original motivations for maintaining this blog were to communicate my thoughts and observations as I travelled around to my family and friends; and to force myself to write something for others to read. It was about time to pull me out of the insulated world within my head and make me pay closer attention to the structure, clarity and purpose of what I write.
Before this blog, there was little outward sign of my writerly predilection. That wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that that I have a long history of writing and hoarding my writing.
The love affair with making mind, paper and mark-making tool work together began when I was quite young. At the age of 5 or so I was given a pretty little notebook, and in it I wrote a story about an orphan girl who was about to be adopted by a couple with nefarious intentions. This little girl was apparently the key to some secret piece of information that would help this couple get stinking rich. To this day I remember the feelings that were bubbling up inside as I “formulated” this story… Oooh they were bad, sneaky people but the little girl was smart! All the outside forces were against her, for the power of choice and decisionmaking was the province of adults only; and at the same time none of them felt enough personal relationship with her to care about how she saw things. Even the adults who were trying to do the best thing for her were in actual fact harming her (by allowing this bad couple to take her) because they just thought they could solve the problem their way. Continue reading
Thinking coral 