Words_In the Year Two Thousand...(And Eleven) Part I: Write Right Now

This is the blog when I survey the 56-week landscape of the future that is 2011 and indiscriminately place primary-colored thumbtacks here and there representing the distant wishes of my future self. My goal is to not be too unrealistic nor too realistic. Is that possible? Here goes nothing.

I've said it before and I suppose I'll say this every year. Writing is something I've always enjoyed yet have consistently ignored and neglected instead of nurtured and challenged. It's probably my favorite way to communicate because of its intimacy and expressiveness and unpredictability all at once. My favorite thing about writing is the way it transforms itself unexpectedly and starts to take on a life of its own without consulting you, the author. And you find yourself at "The End," realizing your story has masterfully written itself and you were just the means to get there. Writing causes us to empty ourselves into one or two or perhaps hundreds of people. It connects us so uniquely in the most indirectly direct of ways. I'd like to write more, of course, yet write with more meaning and tenacity and purpose that may be purely narrative or humorous or journalistic or all of the above. I'd like to challenge myself to write more thoughtfully outside of my small day-to-day world that is true and alive to me but largely limited in the stratosphere of nonfiction. Most importantly, I need to exercise what I believe about writing. It's nothing if it's not pursued as a necessity. I need it to be necessary. Otherwise, the landscape is lost and so am I.

Coming Up: Part II: The Future of Friendships