11h08-12h08, 25-February-2013
With the hopes of overcoming self-consciousness I begin from a place long in warmth, comfort, and hot chocolate (and short in wi-fi)…
In the first term of my freshman year at Yeshiva University a professor of mine whose name is lost in my memory tasked her Creative Writing class with the semester-long project of writing one page a day. She used the word ‘journal’ to describe the project, though there was no requirement to chronicle life events or deep personal thoughts. This professor simply wanted us to find the discipline to set time aside each day to write…about anything.
I can report that each of the students in that 1983 class successfully completed the project, to varying degrees and via a myriad of motivations and methods (which in at least three cases proved to be somewhat costly, at least when measured up against my $300/month budget). I can also report without a shred of self-congratulation or ego-tripping that my journal received the prof’s highest possible praise, though she affixed no grade to my stellar work at the end of the semester (or that of any of my classmates), merely the admonition that the reward was in the thing itself and that I should endeavor to continue the “exercise”.
Can I say that I was not the least bit disappointed at the lack of a hard-and-fast grade for that long-ago assignment? No, because I set a rule then that I plan to also adhere to now as I pick the effort back up nearly 30 years later: Write only the truth. (“What?! No ‘A+’? But I worked my young sweet hard thin shapely 18-year-old patootie off on that thing! Is she kidding?! <insert expletive>!) Now by no means does this rule require that I be completely forthcoming, nor does it absolve me of the occasional licensed omission (artistic or otherwise), however anyone bothering to visit this space going forward can rest assured that what they read will be free of fictionalization, exaggeration, and good ol’ fashioned fibbing (at least within Clintonian guidelines)…unless, of course, it is characterized otherwise.
So to borrow unabashedly from one of the greats (unless or until I come up with a clever closing line of my own that ranks)…”That’s the news, and I am out of here!”