I went into New York City on Friday, which is always wonderful. Although I've enjoyed living all around the country, although I have raved and always will rave about Seattle, New York stands above. For reasons entirely unoriginal and covered in quite literally every work of fiction and non-fiction in every different medium known to man, so I won't recap.
I had heard about the High Line park many times and always wanted to see it, and finally got to walk it. Really, it's wonderful. The park itself is beautiful, even when everything's dead and bare. The views are mind-boggling, and there's a lot of development and redevelopment going on in the immediate vicinity so it will only get better...although the more Detroit areas along the walk give it some character as well, so hopefully that won't entirely go away. This is a great thing that other cities should be falling all over themselves to emulate.
Speaking of Seattle, the sensation of walking along the elevated park reminded me of something. Driving north along the Alaskan Way Viaduct, elevated above ground level, it felt sort of like you were soaring through the city. It was wonderful as well, although tempered by the high probability that rather than soaring you were sitting in traffic. Plus the constant realization that the viaduct was permanently damaged by an earthquake and could probably collapse at any minute (not really, but still...the mind wanders). Why couldn't they High Line the Viaduct? Sure, it shouldn't be supporting cars anymore, but it wouldn't have to. Landscape it and add access to the Market. Or something. It would be interesting.
Anyway, the next time you're in New York, take some time and visit the High Line. It's a quick walk, and it's well worth the trip.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Friday, December 20, 2013
If You've Never Heard of Brainpickings.org...
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/12/03/anais-nin-love-debbie-millman-1/
"Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It creates the failures. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will drown you with his panic." - Anais Nin
If you've never heard of Brain Pickings, the blog created by Maria Popova, you're missing out. It's quite wonderful, in its self-described interestingness.
"Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It creates the failures. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will drown you with his panic." - Anais Nin
If you've never heard of Brain Pickings, the blog created by Maria Popova, you're missing out. It's quite wonderful, in its self-described interestingness.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Monday, December 16, 2013
Driving, a Theory
I have a theory about driving, I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. But bear with me.
In flight training with the military, we do a bit of formation flying. Not a lot, just enough for an introduction. Generally about a week's worth of flights for each phase, since different aircraft types and services utilize formation flying in varying degrees. Fighters and attack aircraft use formations all the time because they're safer and more efficient. Marine and army transport helicopters fly almost exclusively in formation for the same reasons, plus they generally need to transport large ground forces spread across a large number of aircraft and put them in the same place. Coast Guard helicopters rarely fly in formation...but they do sometimes. It's almost unheard of for aircraft to fly in formation outside of the military...it looks cool, but it's practically useless for most forms of commercial aviation.
Therefore, the military prides itself on its formation flying and they've honed it down to an art form over the past century or so. There are hand signals, radio cues, different positions, techniques for closing distance and separating, and more specific techniques further refined for aircraft and mission type. The threat of a collision is constant, so the wing aircraft spend about 90% of their time staring at the lead aircraft, maintaining position. Initially, it's terrifying. But it quickly becomes exhilarating. I mean...flying at 200+ knots within twenty feet of another aircraft...it's can be exciting. Most importantly, though, when aircraft are operating that close together at such high speeds there is constant communication between aircrews. Not only that, there's extensive briefing ahead of time, and tons of practice if you're doing it without an instructor. There should be no surprises - or at least, the surprises should be kept to a minimum. The lead aircraft is basically flying normally, but he needs to think about things farther ahead than he would on his own, since his wingman needs time to adjust.
Well, when you're driving on the road, you're constantly in formation. We think of driving as "going alone on the open road," but it's rarely, if ever, that. You always have cars around you, doing different things, going different places. You need to maintain a loose sort of formation, keeping your distance to avoid tailgating, giving enough distance if you want to pass someone (do a lead change, essentially), you're in different types of vehicle, going different speeds with different destinations. On top of that, there's no communication between cars. You'll see red lights go on if someone's braking and all cars are equipped with turn signals, though few people actually use them. You don't know it's coming, so your reaction time is far slower to a vehicle slowing down in front of you. You have no idea what that person is thinking, and very often they'll give you no warning about what they're going to do. When you're behind a car approaching a red light...are they slowing down to stop? Will they speed up to go through? I dunno, I think we can make it...oh, dammit, he's stopping, crap...BRAKE! Asshole, why'd he stop? It's chaos. Not that it'd help at this point, but why did no car company ever think to fit a very short range VHF radio into every car? How would that not make sense?
Driving is inherently stressful. It's formation flying, something that already requires intense concentration and planning, but without any of the safety precautions or coordination. It's kind of insane that we force people to do it for even the most mundane of daily chores.
In flight training with the military, we do a bit of formation flying. Not a lot, just enough for an introduction. Generally about a week's worth of flights for each phase, since different aircraft types and services utilize formation flying in varying degrees. Fighters and attack aircraft use formations all the time because they're safer and more efficient. Marine and army transport helicopters fly almost exclusively in formation for the same reasons, plus they generally need to transport large ground forces spread across a large number of aircraft and put them in the same place. Coast Guard helicopters rarely fly in formation...but they do sometimes. It's almost unheard of for aircraft to fly in formation outside of the military...it looks cool, but it's practically useless for most forms of commercial aviation.
Therefore, the military prides itself on its formation flying and they've honed it down to an art form over the past century or so. There are hand signals, radio cues, different positions, techniques for closing distance and separating, and more specific techniques further refined for aircraft and mission type. The threat of a collision is constant, so the wing aircraft spend about 90% of their time staring at the lead aircraft, maintaining position. Initially, it's terrifying. But it quickly becomes exhilarating. I mean...flying at 200+ knots within twenty feet of another aircraft...it's can be exciting. Most importantly, though, when aircraft are operating that close together at such high speeds there is constant communication between aircrews. Not only that, there's extensive briefing ahead of time, and tons of practice if you're doing it without an instructor. There should be no surprises - or at least, the surprises should be kept to a minimum. The lead aircraft is basically flying normally, but he needs to think about things farther ahead than he would on his own, since his wingman needs time to adjust.
Well, when you're driving on the road, you're constantly in formation. We think of driving as "going alone on the open road," but it's rarely, if ever, that. You always have cars around you, doing different things, going different places. You need to maintain a loose sort of formation, keeping your distance to avoid tailgating, giving enough distance if you want to pass someone (do a lead change, essentially), you're in different types of vehicle, going different speeds with different destinations. On top of that, there's no communication between cars. You'll see red lights go on if someone's braking and all cars are equipped with turn signals, though few people actually use them. You don't know it's coming, so your reaction time is far slower to a vehicle slowing down in front of you. You have no idea what that person is thinking, and very often they'll give you no warning about what they're going to do. When you're behind a car approaching a red light...are they slowing down to stop? Will they speed up to go through? I dunno, I think we can make it...oh, dammit, he's stopping, crap...BRAKE! Asshole, why'd he stop? It's chaos. Not that it'd help at this point, but why did no car company ever think to fit a very short range VHF radio into every car? How would that not make sense?
Driving is inherently stressful. It's formation flying, something that already requires intense concentration and planning, but without any of the safety precautions or coordination. It's kind of insane that we force people to do it for even the most mundane of daily chores.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Driving in Snow
So, skiing in fresh snow is way better than driving in it. You're welcome for that profound insight.
I haven't driven in the snow in several years. Before moving to Michigan over the summer, I lived in Florida, and before that I was in Seattle, and before that I didn't drive nearly as much. Florida, obviously, was without snow. It was the panhandle so it got relatively cold in the winter months, but never snowy or icy. Seattle was colder but usually too mild for significant snow accumulation, although the hilly terrain of downtown certainly amplified the effects...often with hilarious results.
It's fairly remarkable to think about. Snow, when compacted, is strong enough to support a two ton vehicle. Cars don't just smush the snow out of the way, they basically create a thick layer of ice on the road. Ice, with seriously reduced friction, and friction is somewhat important to maintaining control of a vehicle. The snow seems to compact unevenly under the tires as well, which makes the controls feel squirrely. Erratic control can only exacerbate a bad situation, much like pilot-induced oscillations on the runway after a bad landing.
On Monday, I took a turn just a little too quickly. Getting into the turn was alright, but the car quickly let go. I had no control. The wheels were turned, the brakes just let the tires skid over the snow, rather than stop, and I had no way out. I skidded into a speed limit sign and wound up about six inches from amputating the back right wheel on a thick slab of concrete that defined a storm drain. With some help, and much embarrassment (it was the entrance to my work, and most of my coworkers were driving in just behind me) I was able to extricate my car without further incident.
Driving in to work today, there was unplowed snow the entire way. It was an experience...I don't know that I've ever been that nervous when driving. I'm a fairly confident driver (probably a bit overconfident, like most drivers) but that was pretty intense. So, learning to drive in the snow. Should be fun.
I haven't driven in the snow in several years. Before moving to Michigan over the summer, I lived in Florida, and before that I was in Seattle, and before that I didn't drive nearly as much. Florida, obviously, was without snow. It was the panhandle so it got relatively cold in the winter months, but never snowy or icy. Seattle was colder but usually too mild for significant snow accumulation, although the hilly terrain of downtown certainly amplified the effects...often with hilarious results.
It's fairly remarkable to think about. Snow, when compacted, is strong enough to support a two ton vehicle. Cars don't just smush the snow out of the way, they basically create a thick layer of ice on the road. Ice, with seriously reduced friction, and friction is somewhat important to maintaining control of a vehicle. The snow seems to compact unevenly under the tires as well, which makes the controls feel squirrely. Erratic control can only exacerbate a bad situation, much like pilot-induced oscillations on the runway after a bad landing.
On Monday, I took a turn just a little too quickly. Getting into the turn was alright, but the car quickly let go. I had no control. The wheels were turned, the brakes just let the tires skid over the snow, rather than stop, and I had no way out. I skidded into a speed limit sign and wound up about six inches from amputating the back right wheel on a thick slab of concrete that defined a storm drain. With some help, and much embarrassment (it was the entrance to my work, and most of my coworkers were driving in just behind me) I was able to extricate my car without further incident.
Driving in to work today, there was unplowed snow the entire way. It was an experience...I don't know that I've ever been that nervous when driving. I'm a fairly confident driver (probably a bit overconfident, like most drivers) but that was pretty intense. So, learning to drive in the snow. Should be fun.
Friday, December 13, 2013
Nothing is Uninteresting
It's one of my favorite sayings. I don't know where I got it from, but I'll gladly take credit for it.
The main rotor of a helicopter produces torque which, according to Newton's Third Law of Motion, means that the fuselage will rotate in the opposite direction of the rotor system. So if the rotor spins clockwise, the fuselage spins counterclockwise. This makes a helicopter pretty unusable, so we put a tail rotor some distance away to counteract that spin, producing the creatively named anti-torque. That'll hold the nose in the desired direction as the rotor continues torquing the fuck out of the gearbox. However, that sideward force, plus the rotational force that's still there, are both aiming in the same direction. There's an imbalance, and while the nose is pointed where you want it to be, the whole thing is slowly sliding sideways, to the left in this instance. It's called a translating tendency. So, to counteract that, you tilt the main rotor system, which caused all this nonsense to begin with, slightly to the right. That changes the direction of lift ever so slightly, still largely vertical but just barely enough to the right to nullify the leftward translating tendency. You now have a helicopter in a stable hover. Several thousand pounds, floating some distance above the ground, for as long as you want, limited only by the amount of fuel to feed the controlled explosions that make it all possible.
All those controlled explosions, plus the controlled explosions of millions and millions of other vehicles, power plants, cow farts, and chimneys, produce waste byproducts in the form of heat, water vapor, and carbon dioxide. Even in the most efficient engines, only about 30% of the energy that is produced is usable. The rest goes to waste. And that's the efficient ones. The CO2 enters the atmosphere at a rate far faster than anything is capable of removing it, throwing a delicate system out of whack and accelerating a warming process that's supposed to take thousands and thousands of years and compressing it into roughly two hundred. It causes ice to melt at alarming rates, produces smog and harmful pollution, plus other environmental changes that would be totally normal were they happening at a normal rate but they're not. So life can't adapt. We humans can, sure, but not necessarily anything else. It is causing irreversible damage to the planet, most likely with dire consequences.
Nobody really knows why a football spirals the way it does. Something so simple, yet nobody really knows why. Same goes with ice skating. Nobody has yet figured out why skating works as it does. The movement of a pitcher's arm in baseball is the fastest, most violent motion a human being can make, placing a shocking amount of torque into an amazingly elastic set of muscles and tendons (and yet people still insist that baseball is boring). It's a motion unique to the human species...chimpanzees, gorillas, and the like can't do it. They can't muster more than twenty or so miles per hour on a throw, yet Aroldis Chapman can fling a baseball close to 110 miles per hour (has he thrown it faster? I'm not sure). Scientists think it's because humans, during the early days when we hunted all the time, would throw spears and rocks and stuff to bring down their prey. They did this while chasing this prey down over long distances, much farther than any other species can move in one burst on land. We aren't fast, but we were built specifically to run. Our feet, our legs, our ass muscles (we have surprisingly large ass muscles), our sweat glands, were all designed to keep us motoring for long stretches.
Why did we ever leave Africa? What caused our distant ancestors to decide "yeah, let's go that way" and then walk for the next few thousands of years? Why did we start hating each other?
Why do we like music so much?
Outer space? Just, literally, anything involving outer space?
Shit's interesting.
The main rotor of a helicopter produces torque which, according to Newton's Third Law of Motion, means that the fuselage will rotate in the opposite direction of the rotor system. So if the rotor spins clockwise, the fuselage spins counterclockwise. This makes a helicopter pretty unusable, so we put a tail rotor some distance away to counteract that spin, producing the creatively named anti-torque. That'll hold the nose in the desired direction as the rotor continues torquing the fuck out of the gearbox. However, that sideward force, plus the rotational force that's still there, are both aiming in the same direction. There's an imbalance, and while the nose is pointed where you want it to be, the whole thing is slowly sliding sideways, to the left in this instance. It's called a translating tendency. So, to counteract that, you tilt the main rotor system, which caused all this nonsense to begin with, slightly to the right. That changes the direction of lift ever so slightly, still largely vertical but just barely enough to the right to nullify the leftward translating tendency. You now have a helicopter in a stable hover. Several thousand pounds, floating some distance above the ground, for as long as you want, limited only by the amount of fuel to feed the controlled explosions that make it all possible.
All those controlled explosions, plus the controlled explosions of millions and millions of other vehicles, power plants, cow farts, and chimneys, produce waste byproducts in the form of heat, water vapor, and carbon dioxide. Even in the most efficient engines, only about 30% of the energy that is produced is usable. The rest goes to waste. And that's the efficient ones. The CO2 enters the atmosphere at a rate far faster than anything is capable of removing it, throwing a delicate system out of whack and accelerating a warming process that's supposed to take thousands and thousands of years and compressing it into roughly two hundred. It causes ice to melt at alarming rates, produces smog and harmful pollution, plus other environmental changes that would be totally normal were they happening at a normal rate but they're not. So life can't adapt. We humans can, sure, but not necessarily anything else. It is causing irreversible damage to the planet, most likely with dire consequences.
Nobody really knows why a football spirals the way it does. Something so simple, yet nobody really knows why. Same goes with ice skating. Nobody has yet figured out why skating works as it does. The movement of a pitcher's arm in baseball is the fastest, most violent motion a human being can make, placing a shocking amount of torque into an amazingly elastic set of muscles and tendons (and yet people still insist that baseball is boring). It's a motion unique to the human species...chimpanzees, gorillas, and the like can't do it. They can't muster more than twenty or so miles per hour on a throw, yet Aroldis Chapman can fling a baseball close to 110 miles per hour (has he thrown it faster? I'm not sure). Scientists think it's because humans, during the early days when we hunted all the time, would throw spears and rocks and stuff to bring down their prey. They did this while chasing this prey down over long distances, much farther than any other species can move in one burst on land. We aren't fast, but we were built specifically to run. Our feet, our legs, our ass muscles (we have surprisingly large ass muscles), our sweat glands, were all designed to keep us motoring for long stretches.
Why did we ever leave Africa? What caused our distant ancestors to decide "yeah, let's go that way" and then walk for the next few thousands of years? Why did we start hating each other?
Why do we like music so much?
Outer space? Just, literally, anything involving outer space?
Shit's interesting.
Thursday, December 12, 2013
The title of this blog
It took me, like, three goddamn weeks to pick a title for this thing. I hate picking titles. Whenever I'd write a research paper, titles were the best part. At two or three in the morning on the day a paper was due (because it's more exciting to do the whole thing the night before it's due), I'd be a bit loopy and ready for the two hours' sleep I'd get before we all had to wake up at six in the damn morning. I'd go for the looniest, borderline unprofessionalest (sometimes entirely unprofessional) thing I could think of, and expand upon it. With mixed results, of course, but still, it was my favorite part of writing a paper.
But I got to do that at the end. It was the finishing touch. Here, I have to pick it before I can even start! What the hell. I hate this title already, because it's exceedingly dorky.
If you ever talk with a pilot, or anyone with any experience in the aviation field, or even one of those awkward guys who wear Ray Bans unironically and hang around at airports, they'll probably mention that something is "behind the power curve." It has to do with aerodynamics, specifically drag, and how an airplane behaves at different speeds. There are two (three, really) types of drag: induced drag and parasitic drag. Induced drag has to do with the air becoming turbulent around the wingtips, producing something called wingtip vortices. These get smaller as the angle of attack gets smaller, which gets smaller as you go faster (as a general rule...not always. But I'm being too verbose as it is). So if you plot it on a graph, it looks like an exponential curve that descends from left-right. Parasitic drag comes from the shape of the airplane itself. Things that have airflow around them produce parasitic drag, it's unavoidable. You can minimize it (this is why golf balls have those little indentations in them), but you can never totally eliminate it. As you increase your speed, parasitic drag increases, while induced drag is decreasing into negligibility. It looks like an exponential curve that's ascends from left-right.
Put the two together, you get a bell-curve looking thing. If you do some magic math and sum the two together at each point along the curves, you get an ACTUAL inverted bell curve thing, called total drag. The bottom of this curve is where you have the least drag acting on an aircraft, and that's super important for myriad reasons beyond the purpose of this post. Total drag is also referred to as the power curve.
To the right of this point, things are normal. If you want to go faster, you advance the throttle to go faster because you need more power to overcome the increased drag of an increased airspeed. You pull back on the throttle if you want to slow down. Simple.
Where it gets weird is to the left of that minimum drag point. See, it's a bell curve. To the right, as I just said, you add power...you go faster. But on the other side, the exact opposite is true. If you keep everything else in equilibrium, if you want to go slower you need to ADD power. Increase the throttle to go slower. If you want to go faster, you need to take out some power. It's weird, it's counterintuitive, and it's killed a lot of people. One of those "facts written in blood" sorts of things. It's a fine place to be, and often pilots need to fly in that range (for a good example, the Blue Angels do this in their show, it's called a "high alpha" maneuver. Everyone who takes lessons for a private pilot's license will do this on their first or second flight). But shit gets weird. It becomes a particularly dangerous phenomenon when you're trying to land. You can put yourself into a situation from which you cannot recover.
It's one of those cliches that has worked its way into general terminology. It's a metaphor for being stuck in a dangerous place with no way out. But as long as you can recognize it and take appropriate action, you can get out. To a point.
But I got to do that at the end. It was the finishing touch. Here, I have to pick it before I can even start! What the hell. I hate this title already, because it's exceedingly dorky.
If you ever talk with a pilot, or anyone with any experience in the aviation field, or even one of those awkward guys who wear Ray Bans unironically and hang around at airports, they'll probably mention that something is "behind the power curve." It has to do with aerodynamics, specifically drag, and how an airplane behaves at different speeds. There are two (three, really) types of drag: induced drag and parasitic drag. Induced drag has to do with the air becoming turbulent around the wingtips, producing something called wingtip vortices. These get smaller as the angle of attack gets smaller, which gets smaller as you go faster (as a general rule...not always. But I'm being too verbose as it is). So if you plot it on a graph, it looks like an exponential curve that descends from left-right. Parasitic drag comes from the shape of the airplane itself. Things that have airflow around them produce parasitic drag, it's unavoidable. You can minimize it (this is why golf balls have those little indentations in them), but you can never totally eliminate it. As you increase your speed, parasitic drag increases, while induced drag is decreasing into negligibility. It looks like an exponential curve that's ascends from left-right.
Put the two together, you get a bell-curve looking thing. If you do some magic math and sum the two together at each point along the curves, you get an ACTUAL inverted bell curve thing, called total drag. The bottom of this curve is where you have the least drag acting on an aircraft, and that's super important for myriad reasons beyond the purpose of this post. Total drag is also referred to as the power curve.
To the right of this point, things are normal. If you want to go faster, you advance the throttle to go faster because you need more power to overcome the increased drag of an increased airspeed. You pull back on the throttle if you want to slow down. Simple.
Where it gets weird is to the left of that minimum drag point. See, it's a bell curve. To the right, as I just said, you add power...you go faster. But on the other side, the exact opposite is true. If you keep everything else in equilibrium, if you want to go slower you need to ADD power. Increase the throttle to go slower. If you want to go faster, you need to take out some power. It's weird, it's counterintuitive, and it's killed a lot of people. One of those "facts written in blood" sorts of things. It's a fine place to be, and often pilots need to fly in that range (for a good example, the Blue Angels do this in their show, it's called a "high alpha" maneuver. Everyone who takes lessons for a private pilot's license will do this on their first or second flight). But shit gets weird. It becomes a particularly dangerous phenomenon when you're trying to land. You can put yourself into a situation from which you cannot recover.
It's one of those cliches that has worked its way into general terminology. It's a metaphor for being stuck in a dangerous place with no way out. But as long as you can recognize it and take appropriate action, you can get out. To a point.
Well, the answer lies...
...somewhere in the middle
Every goddamn time.
My major was Government, with a concentration in International Affairs. Like political science, but not that. Because calling it "political science" is a bit like calling yourself a "custodial engineer." In fact, I used to do that sometimes, I'd say I was a "governmental engineer" or something silly and pretentious and not nearly as humorous as I imagined it was, because looking back...I am an asshole.
But anyway. It seems like for every question we ever tackled in any class related to my major, someone would bring up a question. The professor would set up a false choice, and we'd (or, other people would...I wasn't terribly talkative in a major where grades were based strongly on participation) debate it for a little while. And people would get pretty heated, and they'd argue back and forth, and lay out the arguments, and defend them.
After taking a few of these classes, I noticed the pattern. And I'd think, in my head, "the answer is somewhere in between. Both sides have valid arguments to make, and realizing that is most important." Remember, I'm an asshole.
And every time, we'd get "well, both sides are right. The answer is somewhere in the middle." Of course it is, as it should be.
A Blog?
When I was little, I enjoyed writing. My mom read to me constantly, I started reading pretty young and I had Calvin and Hobbes to thank for a pretty damn broad vocabulary at a pretty damn young age. I was always pretty literate and had a pretty bizarre imagination so I'd draw cartoons and write and things like that. I was particularly good at diagramming sentences, a skill that was apparently growing pretty unpopular among grammar school English teachers at the time but which mine swore by. I liked seeing how everything fit together, the construction, and how very technical (without stating it explicitly) language could be.
Also, I enjoyed adding borders and turning the intricate lines (drawn precisely and with a ruler, of course) into aircraft carriers and space fighters (no rulers in sight).
But I really enjoyed writing. It was something I and everyone around me kind of figured I'd wind up doing for a living. My mom always said she saw me becoming Sam Seaborn, Rob Lowe's character from The West Wing. I would've been okay with that, I liked Sam.
Then I got to high school, and stopped. I didn't stop thinking I'd be a writer, I stopped writing. I was busy with school and stuff, sure, but I kept putting it off. I didn't like the idea of other people seeing my writing, and I figured I could keep it up without doing it so frequently. That dragged on into college, although where I went to college there REALLY wasn't any time for that. Although a few of my friends managed to write casually.
As a side note, I'm referring to fiction writing. My major in college, and so many of my high school classes, required me to do plenty of research writing and stuff like that. Although now that I've been out of college for longer than I was in it (good God, I'm getting old) I still feel confident that I could bang out a research paper.
But I took a creative writing class in my junior year (although we didn't call it that...okay, I went to a service academy, now you know). After having not done any real writing in close to seven years...the results were atrocious. I mean, we were required to basically write two short stories over the course of the semester with other random exercises thrown in, and mine were simply atrocious. I couldn't think of anything to write, couldn't come up with an ending to anything I DID write. It was eye opening, and I resolved to try and recover what I had lost, what I had let atrophy...willingly.
That was now, once again, seven years ago. Since then, I signed up for NaNoWriMo three years in a row and wrote...not a single goddamn word.
So that's what I'm doing here. I will start writing. About any goddamn thing, it doesn't matter. I just want to write again, I want to start somewhere, I will start here. Read it, or don't, or read some of it. Or don't.
Also, I enjoyed adding borders and turning the intricate lines (drawn precisely and with a ruler, of course) into aircraft carriers and space fighters (no rulers in sight).
But I really enjoyed writing. It was something I and everyone around me kind of figured I'd wind up doing for a living. My mom always said she saw me becoming Sam Seaborn, Rob Lowe's character from The West Wing. I would've been okay with that, I liked Sam.
Then I got to high school, and stopped. I didn't stop thinking I'd be a writer, I stopped writing. I was busy with school and stuff, sure, but I kept putting it off. I didn't like the idea of other people seeing my writing, and I figured I could keep it up without doing it so frequently. That dragged on into college, although where I went to college there REALLY wasn't any time for that. Although a few of my friends managed to write casually.
As a side note, I'm referring to fiction writing. My major in college, and so many of my high school classes, required me to do plenty of research writing and stuff like that. Although now that I've been out of college for longer than I was in it (good God, I'm getting old) I still feel confident that I could bang out a research paper.
But I took a creative writing class in my junior year (although we didn't call it that...okay, I went to a service academy, now you know). After having not done any real writing in close to seven years...the results were atrocious. I mean, we were required to basically write two short stories over the course of the semester with other random exercises thrown in, and mine were simply atrocious. I couldn't think of anything to write, couldn't come up with an ending to anything I DID write. It was eye opening, and I resolved to try and recover what I had lost, what I had let atrophy...willingly.
That was now, once again, seven years ago. Since then, I signed up for NaNoWriMo three years in a row and wrote...not a single goddamn word.
So that's what I'm doing here. I will start writing. About any goddamn thing, it doesn't matter. I just want to write again, I want to start somewhere, I will start here. Read it, or don't, or read some of it. Or don't.
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