So, this whole night I've been itching for a topic to write on. It's been a couple weeks since I last posted so it's about time. Also, I've been spending a considerable amount of time on my blog because of my 100 Days of Happy picture project. Perhaps it's the fact that I log on to Blogger at least once a day to upload a picture that makes me happy, but I just really want to write. Trouble is, I have no idea what to write about.
I have a few ideas that I'm planning on writing about in the future, but I'm not ready to touch on those subjects quite yet for a few different reasons. So, that leaves me with what? A whole blog post of just rambling? I think not!
All writing has meaning, even if it doesn't seem like it. Right now, I'm working on my Honors Capstone Project, the final step in the Honors Program, so that I can graduate with honors in the spring of 2015. For this project, I've been looking at the letters of a prominent woman who lived in the town where my college is located from the 1880's until she died in 1951. She wrote consistently throughout her life, but I'm working with the letters that she wrote in the early 1880's, when she first arrived in Morris as a teenager. At first glance, these letters seem really mundane and uninteresting; they cover the often trivial aspects of daily life in a small prairie town in the late nineteenth century. However, after taking the time to delve into these letters, it becomes clear that they not only give an insight into prairie life in the 1880's, but they also have a wealth of a meaning all their own. They give a glimpse into what was important to the writer and the sender, and they have their own secrets - they make references to people and things that are often unclear and will need to be further understood with outside sources. Furthermore, the aspects of life that seem so mundane at first glance are unbelievably telling when trying to understand the way people lived and the way Morris was as a town during its early years.
The letters I'm looking at for my project are a testimony to the fact that people are constantly choosing to write things down, whether they are writing a grocery list or a novel. These conscious actions go to show just how significant all writing is, even if it doesn't seem like it immediately. This is why the written word is so important; we have whole fields of scholarly work that are devoted to analyzing the written word because it is so unbelievably significant. Writing is a form of expression and it is one of the best ways to better understand the human psyche. This is why I have this blog; through writing, I learn more about myself. This blog is for me and though I get excited about the prospect of other people reading it, it's not the ultimate goal.
Though this blog is important for me, I also keep a paper journal. I don't write in it often, but when I do I can spend hours writing up one entry. Blogs and other forms of electronic publishing are fantastic because they make written work easily accessible; however, I believe that sitting down and writing something with a pen and paper is so much more personal. Not only is it tangible, but a written letter or diary entry is magical in its own right. When I sit down to write something on the computer, it is so easy to edit my work, and I do edit it because I want to make sure it is the best work that it can be. Of course, this is pertinent when it comes to academic writing so I'm used to constantly editing as a student. As a scholar, I often print out my drafts to edit, especially when I'm writing major papers, but when I'm typing up my blog or writing an e-mail, it isn't necessarily convenient to do that so I simply end up editing my work electronically. However, in this process of electronic writing and editing, I believe that we lose a really magical aspect of putting pen to paper - with pen and paper, a person's thought process as they are actively writing is readily seen and that is super cool. We can see when a person messes up because words will be crossed out or there will be eraser marks. There is something about putting pen to paper that is so unbelievably raw and human. You don't get this with electronically typing something up. Inevitably, by the time I publish this post, I will have gone through and edited my work multiple times, looking for typos and changing any sentence structures that don't sound quite right, adding and deleting portions as I see fit. You wont get to see my thought process as I do this because you can't see any pen or eraser marks on a blog post. The final product is the only product on my blog.
There is something truly magical about sitting down with a pen a paper. Unfortunately, it is becoming more and more of a lost art because people are continuously turning to their computer, smart phones, and tablets to write - whether it be correspondences, notes to self, or invitations. Because of this misfortune (and I am absolutely positive that it is a misfortune), I ask you, whoever you are, to please take some time to get a pen and paper out and simply write. Write a letter and send it through the mail, write a poem - it doesn't have to be a good poem - or simply make up a to do list. I hope you feel a sense of gratification in doing so. Technology has become increasingly significant in today's modern world, but with its rise, we have lost something truly special and meaningful in the form of hand written thoughts and correspondences.
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