In one of my February blog posts, I
mentioned that, according to a facebook/buzzefeed quiz, the career I actually
should have is Writer. I do have
tons of ideas floating around in my head all the time, but I never get all of them
onto paper in time. I find that
the kind of writing I enjoy the most is corresponding with people about topics
that I’m interested in. One of the
pleasures in my life is writing long emails to friends in far places. Writing to someone whose only impression of my life is based on what I tell
them somehow helps me to articulate my thoughts and experiences. As much of an introvert as I
am, I am also a relational individual, and correspondence offers me the perfect
mix of “relating” to someone on my own terms without having my space
affected by a physical interaction.
I’ve been in Nashville for the past
3 days, and right now as I type, I’m sitting in my plane getting ready to take
off. The country fan in me has
enjoyed being in Music City, and as a prospective future Divinity student at
Vanderbilt, I’ve been trying to get a good feel for the University as a whole. I spent Saturday traveling, Sunday
getting acquainted with Nashville, and Monday visiting the Divinity
school. As an introvert, I have
enjoyed traveling alone immensely.
It’s always exciting to be able to do whatever I want, however I
want. It allows me to be with my
thoughts, with minimal interruptions and few distractions. I spent 2 nights here, and I wrote a
blog post each night.
This brings me to the realization
that one of the keys to prolific writing, for me at least, is being alone. The extra space frees me up to express
myself in written words. Now I
understand why I wrote so frequently when I lived in the San Francisco Bay
Area. I was renting a room from a
lady who lived in a nice house but worked so hard she was hardly there to enjoy
it. I, on the other hand, worked
a little over 30 hours a week and had a lot of time to be alone and to write. It was the most delightful thing to
bundle up in the evenings, brew some tea, and write.
Now that I’m living at home in LA,
I find that I don’t have as much incentive to write. Every night at dinner, I converse with my parents (who have
become my best friends), and on weekends, when my brother visits, we have even
more stimulating and satisfying conversations. Because I’m being so verbally expressive on a daily basis, I
find that my downtime is spent/wasted(?) on more “mindless” activities—surfing
the internet, reading up on celebrity gossip, or watching actors’ interviews on
YouTube. I’ve found that those
activities can also yield some profitable results. I can engage critically with culture through media, even as
I search randomly in a manner more whimsical than intentional.
All this is to say that, whether
I’m having daily conversations with best friends or typing onto my MacBook Air
on solitary evenings, using words to process my thoughts is something I very
much value. I’m not an external
processor, so I usually won’t talk about something I just experienced. (For example, neither of my blog posts written
in Nashville were about Nashville).
Things need to ruminate inside of me for a while before I share. (I was born in the Chinese Year of the
Cow; perhaps that’s why I chew the cud and make my ideas pass through a few
stomachs!) But sooner than later,
I will share, and when I do, whether it be out loud or on paper, I will make
some room for new thoughts and ideas to come in and be digested ;)
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