I need a new outlet, something to occupy my time other than work, gaming, and being a father. It must be my creative side yearning to be set free. The past couple of months I've felt a pining to build another computer, but there is absolutely no need for that, and I simply can't justify the cost anyway. The only other creativity I've felt reasonably good it is my word craft. I've only completed one story, of which I'm proud. Several others have been started but they always seemed to fizzle out before reaching the end. Often too many other distractions present themselves. This blog is my attempt to begin writing on a regular basis. It doesn't matter if anyone ever actually reads it or not, that's not necessarily my point. Eventually I plan to use it to compose stories, but this first entry will serve mainly to knock the dust off of my writing skills.
I've really settled into a routine in my life. Work occupies most of my week, and after Aaron and I get home, I find something to watch while I eat, then something to play until it's time for bed. Sometimes we play together, sometimes we don't. The only difference on weekends is that I don't go to work. Occasionally I have company, and that makes for a wonderful break in the routine, but it's nothing that is regularly scheduled. This weekend, for example, I invited Kristine over after we spoke about it a couple of days ago. We haven't been in touch since then, but I'm expecting she'll call me at some point later this afternoon. Next weekend, Becky and Evan are supposed to come down and we'll all go to the beach together.
Hopefully I can carve a new habit for myself in writing on a regular basis. If my life had gone differently I might have even pursued writing as a career choice. Somewhere in the back of my mind I still feel like I could bring in some extra income with it, at the very least. But monetary reasons are not the be-all end-all of my desire to write. It's a craft, just like painting or composing music, and while I have no talent in those mediums, I sometimes feel I'm wasting my writing skills but not using them.
With a little luck, a good topic for creative writing will present itself before I write here again. Most of my other writing experiments flowed out of me in the first person perspective. Learning how to tell a story from the third person is something I wish to hone. It always just seemed easiest to tell a compelling narrative as if I was actually experiencing it. Writing dialogue has also been a challenge. I like to be as correct as I know how with punctuation. When reading works by others I don't pay much attention to it, but that would be a good place to start learning. I've often even considered taking a creative writing course at the community college, and perhaps I'll end up there given time. This blog will make do in the meantime.
