I think of myself as a writer, and yet my diaries here are few and far between. My blog entries are even scarcer these days. Even today, visiting my principal blog sites, I ended up just clearing out the spam comments instead of writing anything. (Yet.— Written hopefully.)
In the recent past, I have been a steady if not prolific commenter here and elsewhere. I can justly blame the drop-off in comments this past quarter to my having enrolled in an intensive German language integration course which, counting travel to and fro, takes up at least 4 hours every weekday afternoon. That commitment to learning German will continue at least through the end of May, and that, coupled with a feast-or-famine paid work schedule (some days nothing, some days an overwhelming amount of work), gives me something of an excuse.
But it's hardly a satisfactory excuse at all.
I can usually find time to do the things I really want to do. So it is that I waste hours on Facebook and obsessively return to the same websites (including this one) repeatedly throughout the day and night. This is especially true when something unusual or important has happened that directly intersects in some way with my life — in this latest case, the Boston Marathon bombings, given that I have an adult child currently living there and that our family lived for several years just over the line from Watertown in Belmont not much more than a mile or so from where the second suspect was captured. (To say that I was glued to the news would be an understatement. Even in German class I was compulsively checking Facebook and Flipboard updates on my iPhone every few minutes — but I digress, perhaps.)
I would like to believe that posting this will mark my return to greater engagement as a writer. I have a fictionalized autobiographical book underway that is aching to be finished before more details seep from my mind,* among several others. I have many comments and opinions that I ought to expand into bona fide essays and diaries — personal, political, feminist, (formerly) religious… and even purely creative and/or humorous.
There is no shortage of material with which to work. Nor is there really a shortage of time as such. Seems to me, however, that there's something of a shortage of self-discipline. Here is hoping that a public confession of this kind will serve to help relight the fire that spurred many a lengthy essay and journal entry in my younger years, many of which began with the words, "I feel compelled to write."
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*My book is about my time as the principal of a private American school housed in a French public school. In addition to all the Up the Down Staircase elements inherent to dealing with teachers and (mostly expat) students and their families, I was also dealing with a French host school administration that was actively trying to kill off our school. Fun times for all!
Sun Apr 21, 2013 at 10:33 AM PT: Thanks, Rescue Rangers!