Shane Life

I found out about the Friday Feast via Chimpotle originally. But I feel like linking Logtar today.

Appetizer
On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 as highest), how much do you like your own handwriting?

I have the uncanny ability to make my writing more masculine or feminine at a whim. I have mad handwriting skillz. Also, back when I expected to be a famous athlete and expected to be signing jerseys and whatnot all the time, I perfected my signature. My signature is awesome. It looks like the signature of someone who is famous. You should probably ask for my autograph sometime.

Soup
Do you prefer baths or showers?

The problem with baths is that the water gets cold and tubs are never large enough to accommodate my large…frame. Huge tubs and one of those immersion temperature controls (like they use for molecular gastronomy) - I could really get into baths (get it?). But I don’t think they make immersion cookers that large so I almost never take them.

Salad
What was the last bad movie you watched?

Sweeney Todd. That movie was well-acted and really really bad.

Main Course
Name something you are addicted to and describe how it affects your life.

Chipotle. Alli and I can’t really stop, which makes it very difficult to lose weight. We are certain that there are addictive chemicals in it that make us crave it fortnightly.

Dessert
Which instrument is your favorite to listen to?

It’s a tossup between acoustic guitar and piano. I think that the sitar is a beautiful instrument, but only in the right setting. Acoustic guitar and piano work nearly everywhere.

I had planned to participate in Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) again this year (meaning I planned to again, not that I’ve participated before and will participate again). But now it is November 6th and I still haven’t written one sentence for a novel.

I’d like to give excuses like lack of time (and it would be true), but the absolute truth is that I haven’t a clue what to write about. If I were to start writing a story right now, I imagine it would start as autobiographical, about a guy from the Midwest blah blah blah…

Creative writing was always a challenge for me when I wanted to draw on experiences that weren’t my own. Anyone have any ideas? Even with you helping to provide a framework to my story, I still might struggle to bang out 50,000+ words by the end of this month. (Especially since I still have a sermon to prepare for this weekend.)

However, if I do manage to write something, I’ll be sure to post it.

It’s been almost 8 years since I graduated college with an English degree.

I spent the first year or so out of college as a writer, but as the company I worked for grew, my role changed and morphed and in time, I became a graphic designer. I didn’t do it on purpose, it just kind of happened.

I enjoyed it for a long time because it made me feel creative, but over time, the doubts creeped into my mind because I wasn’t trained as a designer…I was trained as a writer. I have confidence in my abilities with the tools — I’m a proficient user of Photoshop, InDesign and the whole suite of Adobe products that designers hang their hats on, but I often doubted my ability to actually design.

I eventually (and maybe only recently) overcame that belief that I just wasn’t a good enough graphic designer. I know now that there were negative forces who caused me to feel that way and I’m fortunate that those forces no longer hold any power in my life.

However, as I’ve embraced my role as graphic designer, I’ve lost touch with my writing background. That’s what this blog has always been about, really &mdash an outlet for me to tap my fingers to the keyboard and see what comes out. And while I thoroughly enjoy the blogging process, I’m finding that in my new job, I’m being called upon more and more to develop content (which is business-speak for “write”). I still can write perfectly servicable copy, but I am struggling to regain my voice as a writer. It’s as if I’ve gone hoarse &mdash the words are there, they just aren’t emerging with a lot of clarity.

Lately, I’ve been working diligently on a couple of projects that are very important to me. Neither are work projects and both are requiring to write a considerable amount of content. I’m finding myself grossly inadequate right now of accomplishing that writing and it’s really frustrating.

If this post doesn’t make any sense, it only proves its point.

Alli and I started new journals last night. She went to her parents house on Sunday night to help them faux paint their dining room and while she was there, she found some journals that were about 25 years old, written by her parents.

Her parents gave her permission to read through them and she brought them home with her. I picked her up at the half-way point in Mound City and she read from them to me as we drove home. It was such a cool insight into the lives of her parents when they were only just a bit older than us. They talked about their girls (Ashley was 2 and Alli was 4 when the journals begin), their church beliefs, their feelings about their friends and such. It was really cool because they journalled on the same days and it was interesting to read what they talked about individually on the days that they experienced the same things.

Their voices really came through in their writing and it was really neat to see that.

So Alli and I have decided to do it. Before we got home from Mound City last night, we stopped at Borders and picked up journals to write in (mine’s red, Alli’s is black) and we put our first entries in last night. I’m excited for us to do this together. I think that it will be a great thing for us to look back on in 10 or 20 years and remember our thoughts and feelings when we were still in our 20’s (not much longer for me…grrrrrr…).