No, Seriously, I Am Always Writing

As someone who works in a public school 5 days a week for over 190 days a year in the past 2 years,  I have tried to convey to my students that one really does need to know how to write. While the English teachers that I work with admire the direction I have tried to put a spin on the importance of skill building, I sometimes get the idea that no one really knows exactly what I do and how much of "it" I do.

Seriously: I am always writing.

• I write emails for the company, I write emails to my co-workers, I write emails to my friends
• I write short stories
• I write reviews for items and books for a variety of stores
• I write modified texts to let my students access the curriculum
• I write process charts (somtimes also called scaffolds or task charts)
• I write for 4 separate blogs (yes I am crazy)
• I write at least two status updates to FB daily.
• I write text messages to my friends
• I write sample items for my students to refer to when  am not with them
• I write
• and I write
• and I write.

I write as I am falling asleep. I write as I'm going to work, even when I cannot write, whole chunks of sentences form in my head before I even get a chance to pick up a pencil and actually write them down.

I used to write poetry quite a bit.
I still write short stories and novels.
I will always be writing on Project Alpha, the project with no end in sight darned illustrations.

Pictures still are valued at 1000 words. At least. My own hand is much more steady these days.

But I'm always finding an outlet forcing myself to express the ideas in my head that have been placed there by something I've seen or trying to experience or put words to an expeience that I do not quite understand.

The nebulous way my mind wants to work is not much unlike a web one might teach students to use to write with. But it happens in clearer and clearer chunks the more I work at my craft.

I was most recently asked why I hadn't gone into the English department as a major in college instead of heading to Architecture school. And I will be honest: there isn't a lot of money there. But I don't care about making money, not in the way that I don't want to make money, but in the way that money is not the primary decision guide. Architecture was a means to another skill of communication. And I have been able to control a lot of things that I probably would not have been able to without having been formally trained in the visual skills that are required of architecture.

I always was mistified by my friends and aquantances being stimied by the direction to write. I always found it the easiest thing in the world to string words together. I'm not an expert at it and sometimes my direction is more of a stab than a gentle curve. But the words will come.

But always looking for a chance to explain is what is in my head is always the goal. So I am always writing.