Focus, Daniel-san!

(Please pardon these first few entries as I get my feet wet...)

I dreaded writing as a kid. Our sixth grade teacher made us keep journals for most of that year. I remember being graded on it, even! How can you grade someone on personal writings? She would give us a half hour or so every day. She would say, "Ok, class, time for some journal writing. Pull out your notebooks and write for the next 20 minutes."

I would sit there for 15 minutes, unable to think of something to write about, and finally end up with a few short paragraphs, usually about how much I hated writing in my journal.

I don't think I hated writing. I just hated writing without direction.

I certainly love it, now. I wonder if I would have picked up on writing earlier than college if she'd simply given us a topic to write about for each journal entry. It didn't have to be anything fancy - just a word; a starting point, really.

I'm still that way. If I were to sit here, in front of a blank screen, and try to write something funny or witty or intellectual, it just wouldn't happen. Not because I'm boring, dull, or stupid, but just because you can't force those things. So in order for this blog to work out, I'm going to need to figure out my shtick; I need to find my focus.

Eh... I guess I'll have to ponder that a little.

Aside from the focus, I do need to have a few guidelines. My first one is to keep my entries short. I have an unbelievable way of writing five page e-mails, full of useless, but completely accurate, crap.

If all this blog does is help me to write more focused and precisely, then I suppose it will have served a good purpose... at least my co-workers would think so.