Writing as catharsis

I don't blog much anymore, primarily because I write and edit for a living (not that I've ever blogged wtih any regularity). Sometimes the last thing I want to do is write something coherent when I'm here at home.

But after an especially stressful beginning to my week (today was fine, thankfully), I've come to realize just how cathartic writing is for me.

I learned something Monday afternoon that really took me by surprise -- the sort of thing that makes you think about what you really believe. I couldn't get it off my mind.

I'm quite thankful for the flexibility of my job schedule. Yesterday I went to a coffee shop and just wrote. There's just something about the actualizing of my thoughts via pen and paper that helps me get centered again.

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In other news: I think I'd like to start posting a new photo once a week. So here's the first one. I call it "beware the trees." I love the ominous feel it gives me. The trees look to me as if they might uproot themselves and do something destructive. I feel that the darkness of the sky belies the happy mood we were all in.


I took this photo the day after Christmas, 2006. In it you see my cousin Justin, and my soon to be cousin-in-law Becka. They're playing with rubberband-propelled foam rockets that Justin's mother gave all of us for Christmas.

It's becoming a tradition, I suppose, for us to get some sort of silly gift that we can all play with. Christmas 2005: marshmallow blowguns. Those were fun. Until I inadvertantly inhaled a marshmallow.