A Birds-Eye View.

Everyone in my family called me bird, from a young age up until I finally asked them to please stop. I earned this nickname presumably because I flitted everywhere with little concern for the ground under my feet and no awareness of the constraints of life. In third grade, my teacher told my mom that I was a square peg (long before Sarah Jessica Parker made it cool to be one), and that she should probably stop trying to smooth out my edges and just accept that I wouldn’t fit.

I always kind of liked being a free spirit, and it benefitted me in many ways well into my adult life—even after I entered the corporate world. After all, my first two professional writing jobs were with engineers, first software then civil. With these types, someone better be a wild card or the whole ship is going down in a vortex of abstruse nerdliness. 

However, when I took my current job and started working as the only writer amid in a sea of designers, I started to cling to rules and structure as lifelines to both my sanity and my credibility.

In writing, it’s good to know the rules. And if you’ve proven to others that you know them, you can break them without anyone thinking you’re careless or stupid. Most of the time. Also, if you’re editing or critiquing someone else’s work, you can easily crown yourself as the authority by saying things like, “Only if it’s a compound adjective…” or, “What you have here is faulty subordination. Consider revising.” 

As far as structure goes, I never imagined I would appreciate it so much until I tried to get a project done with these people (that is, my wonderful coworkers, whom I truly do love). Yes, yes, yes, we can do anything we want! But we need to do something. What’s it gonna be?! 

Orderliness…methodologies...boundaries…these all sound like the death of creativity; but I’ve found them to be its deliverance. Whether any of my artistic comrades believe it or not. Establishing them provides the freedom to produce; to focus on one point and see where it takes us. 

I thought I only needed this structure under the chaotic conditions of my nine-to-five; but I realized that when I decided to start writing a blog about anything I want, I created those same conditions. I was paralyzed for months, unable to act, because I couldn’t herd my own mental cats. 

Being not even two weeks into a commitment to write daily for a year, I’ve decided to stop counting on what pops into my head on any day (often under duress), and build a framework for this blog.

So…Sundays I will report on my experiments in the kitchen. Tuesdays I will share something culturally significant. Wednesdays I will continue to explore fiction writing <this scares me to death, btw. Fridays I will declare my love of some musical obscurity or another. And the other three days I will leave open. Because I’ve still got to fly, right?

A favorite piece I picked up from local artist/eccentric, Rick Beerhorst.