just some randomness so don't expect anything brilliant

Whoever told me to gargle warm salt water (I believe it was both Mom and Robert) was right on the money. It really helped, especially the first couple of days of this flu-turned-cold thingy I've got going on.

My teaching day was going really, really well, and then I lost energy right before my last class and they were all tired and my lesson plan bombed, and to top it all off I screwed up and wrote on the dry erase board with a permanent marker. So I ended the day feeling a bit like a shit.

I was wanting to stay home tonight but also have some social time, so I invited Martín over for dinner, but he is busy, and Meaghan is out at a concert with a friend of hers, and Shannon won't be home until tomorrow night, so I am sitting here feeling a bit lonely and sorry for myself. Unfortunate, I know.

I noticed that when I'm feeling lonely or experiencing other negative emotions is when I'm most likely to turn to my writing. I suppose it must be a good thing; it has to be a healthier way to channel those emotions than heavy drinking or getting into drugs or fights, right? But it's interesting for me to notice that writing is, actually, a bit like a drug. I turn to it when things aren't going well to help me forget my misery and to lose myself in another world for a while. And the more I do it, the more I turn to it.

Writing is a communication, a way to feel connected, even if there isn't someone immediately available to read what I write. Even my journal is a communication with my unknown, future self. Or if I'm writing fiction, I connect to the world of my characters, it speaks to me, sometimes I receive the scenes and words as though I were watching a movie.

And what's particularly exciting/dangerous about writing is that you're never quite sure who will read it. With speaking, you can be reasonably certain who your audience is: you're looking at them or listening to their voice on the phone. But I write this blog, for example, and though I know my mom and dad and a couple other friends are reading it, I don't know if/who else might be reading it. Or my journal: there is a possibility, however slight, that someday someone besides myself will read it. Hopefully after I am dead so I don't have to have any conversations about its content.

I suppose once again it all comes back to possibility. Possibility excites me.

In fact, now that I think about it, there is a profound sense of possibility inherent in the act of writing. I may have a general idea of what I want to say when I start to write, but oftentimes my writing ends up in a completely different, unexpected place. This blog entry, for example. I thought I'd just write something superficial and random about gargling salt water and feeling lonely, and here I've ended up philosophizing about why I write and enjoy it so.

Writing is a process of discovery, like being able to see partway down a path leading into the woods or mountains but having no idea what lies beyond the first few hundred yards, no idea what dangers or wonders await the traveler...