An introduction

In school, I hated writing. I was given a question to answer, would figure out how I wanted to answer it, then not get to that answer as clearly, concisely, convincingly as I wanted in the writing. How can you not get to your OWN answer? It is not like math, where the answer is absolutely out there, and if you cannot get to it, then well, you just don't have the skills yet. Math seems less contingent on the individual. I didn't take my lackings in math personally. However, writing was a different story until I took a class where I got to write from the "I" perspective. Through 14 years of education, I had been taught to not really write from within, but to write emperically. When I got to say what I really felt and thought, I found the beauty in writing. I found that I could write for myself and it felt good. Solving a math problems could never do that.

My ideas and feelings are not tangible until I commit them to paper. It gets the ideas out of my head so I can grapple with them more clearly. That doesn't mean I have everthing figured out. I have fought with some things for years. I have written in a journal since college. I also have thoughts in various steno notebooks. I thought I would add a medium and let a few of my blabberings out into the world.

"My own information" is part of a larger effort to bring change into my life. To really listen to what I have to say, to what I want. To remove the self-censorship created by what I thought my parents and society expected from me. I have been reminded recently that it is my own story afterall, not theirs. And so here goes my next chapter...