the writer in me... let her out!

If I am ever eloquent, it is with my fingers, not my mouth. Giving extemporaneous speeches? Definitely not my forte. But I am reasonably good at getting an emotion to cross the space between me and someone else, if I am allowed to do it on my own time with my preferred tools. (Keyboard and screen: for better or for worse, I am just young enough not to have had to bother with pen and ink for most of my independent-thinking life.) But, I realize, I probably do myself a disservice by not taking writing a little more seriously. I have thought for a long time that there might be something inside my fingers that longs to squirt itself out joyfully, like toothpaste from a new tube, and land with a satisfied plop onto a keyboard. I like to think that what is inside there dying to get out is some sort of universal truth which will make every reader sigh that particular little sigh that which, translated, means, “Now here’s someone who wouldn’t annoy me even a little bit if she showed up at my doorstep with a suitcase—even if it were a big suitcase...” That is what I would like to think about these fingers of mine. But then I take a good, long look at my fingers—which can barely reach an octave—and I wonder how anything worthy of that discovery-of-a-kindred-spirit sigh could reside in such mundane little digits. I think if I really sat down and forced myself to write regularly, and then took the results through the redaction process instead of just moving on to the next thought, I could probably get better, to the point of being an actually decent writer. I do think I’ve got it in me, and I think I may have some things to say, once I get the observations flowing. But... I’m not results-oriented enough. And I definitely don’t have the attention span or the self-discipline. At least not currently. Maybe they are just atrophied from lack of practice. :-)