Writing

For the vast majority of my life, I avoided writing whenever possible.  This habit began in elementary school, when I would rather laugh or talk with friends than do any assignment.  It continued through high school, where my habit expanded and I would always tend to skip “showing my work” and just provide the final answer required.

These habits also went far from being simply writing, but I would also tend to avoid many forms of communications, whenever I could already ascertain the final solution.  The pattern even permeated my spoken words in personal conversations; I became the silent type, often only speaking my final determination.  In my career, the only thing that seemed worth writing down, were the computer codes that made my projects work.

Although I speak no language as fluently as I am able to type them, I am able to read and write well enough to communicate in English, Spanish, French, and Italian.  I am now teaching myself Latin, though truly, I wish I would have learned that first and I am contemplating Greek next.  I don’t waste my time to memorize all the vocabulary of any, just a summary of the basic structures, proper grammar when I can and of course, the location of a few dictionaries and reference books.

I was once told by my Mother, that I didn’t need to remember every answer, as long as I always remembered where to find it.  And over the course of my life, I have leveraged that lesson to my maximum advantage.  Honestly, yet figuratively, I now often feel imprisoned within my own mind.  To have the benefit of knowledge, yet the inability to communicate it to all but the chosen few either willing or captivated.

Over my life, my refusal to practice such an essential skill, eventually led to an inability to communicate the importance of my messages.  I often speak to soon and say to little or even say the wrong thing, and many people neglect to realize the intelligence in what I was trying to say at all.  However, the opposite inverse is also very true, as I often wait to long and type to much, and many people won’t take the time to read and fully understand the previous context in what I was trying to write.

The only balance I seem to find between my two extremes, is when I am able to set aside my fears, and speak out loud or even type my soliloquies.  I have never considered myself a writer or a poet.  Yet, when I speak in my truest quiet whisper, my words sometimes rhyme.. and in the end, I finally know it.