Ellington

I've been doing too much work in my head and on paper instead of where it actually counts so that people can see it. I didn't realize this until last week when Donna asked about my lack of blog posts. At first I was so confused. How could she have forgotten all of the things about jobs and school and life that I had been writing about this summer? Turns out I was just being crazy, because all of this is written on paper and is neatly tucked away in my room. This ordeal made me wonder: Why have I been keeping everything on paper? Is it some weird form of procrastination or am I just unwilling to change my routine?

Everything I do (almost) starts out on paper. If I have any type of assignment due for school, unless it's less than a paragraph long, I draft it first with a pen. For awhile I tried the tablet feature of my laptop but it just wasn't the same. Four years ago I didn't have a laptop. I didn't even think about having one. (That might be totally wrong. For all I remember, I could've been obsessed.) A year later, my junior year in high school and my first year at St. Andrew's, everything changed. We were required to have laptops and to bring them with us to school each day and to most classes. I found myself trying to adapt to this new technological age that seemed to have sprung on me all at once.

When working on school assignments or on JFP assignments, I always start by making outlines, notes, drafts, etc. on paper in purple ink. Writing and rewriting followed by typing (and sometimes retyping) can take some time. I even print out drafts to write more on or to edit. Obviously all of this could be done on the computer screen. There's so many things that make the process easier, but I have been ignoring them all of my life.

I'm not saying that I've seen the light and I am going to change, although perfecting time management might call for it. (I only write on the back of previously printed documents and then I recycle after the pages have been completely used, so wasting paper isn't much of a problem.) After pondering the question, I have come to the conclusion that I'm just stubborn. My process works. It takes time, but it works. Any other way of writing seems foreign to me. Typing something first makes me feel almost disconnected from the words. I don't want that. I want my writing to come from within for real, not just halfway.

I guess now it's time to start typing all those notes I've written to myself.