starting here

I have tried to start this sentence a million different ways but my fingers keep finding the delete button over and over and then I'm staring once again at a blank screen and a pulsing cursor. What should the first line of a new journal (or in this case, a journal blog) be? I'm starting in the middle. In the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, in the middle of my life. Well, I'm hopeful it's not really the middle, more like the first third or something like that. I'm 30, nearly 31, and I have missed writing. Yes, I've written in a journal for years but my right hand can only hack a few pages of actually putting a pen to paper. By the time I'm a few paragraphs in my hand is spent and I feel like I don't have it in me to write the nitty gritty details, so I just write the big main events without fluff or anything else and call it good. In some ways I feel like my handwritten journal is not entirely me. It is what I'm able to get out in 20 minutes with a slow hand and terrible handwriting. I'm hopeful this little platform here will provide an outlet I've been missing. Yes, there is certainly something so raw and honest and genuine about handwritten anything, but when it only allows me to say the bare minimum of how I am feeling, what I am thinking and what life means for me at that moment, it is not sufficient. So, here we are...a new blog just for me.

I have missed writing terribly. Lately I have thought back to my creative writing classes from my high school days and another I took my freshman year in college up at Utah State. My teachers name for that one was Ben (that's what he went by so I don't even remember his last name), and I loved that class more than I can explain. Ben was the kind of teacher that made you feel especially good about yourself but at the same time drew more out of you that you hadn't realized was in there. Writing, for me, is a necessary outlet. It's kind of like breathing and eating and sleeping. When I don't do it I feel off. In fact, I think more than that, I feel pent up, like there's something inside of me that must come out or I will explode. I'm not even sure what I want to say, but it feels good to sit down and have my fingers say something to this little computer screen, even if no one ever looks at this besides me and my trusty computer screen. Writing breathes new life into me.