1,035

1000 words.  If I sat down every day, could I write 1000 words by the end of the day?  How long is 1000 words?  I’ve only been out of school for a little over a year and I have already forgotten the amount of time and space it takes to write 1000 words.  Before, if given an assignment of a certain word length, say 2500 words, I could immediately think of the number of pages of either single or double-space type that it would take to fill 2500 words.  Having forgotten that months ago I am now typing without a clue as to how long I’ll be typing. 

            Why am I writing 1000 words a day, you may ask?  Is there a certain end purpose to this all?  Well….not really.  I seem to jump from interest to interest every week or so.  One week its practicing violin, the next week its working out, followed by a week of studying for the GRE, after which comes a week full of baking.  More recently, a few weeks ago I was quite taken with pondering the topic of love, and then last week I took up learning sign language. My devotion to an activity usually only lasts between a few days and two weeks, and then after that I’ll take up a new activity though I will occasionally come back to my previous interests.  For example, I don’t practice my violin more than a couple of times a week now because the other evenings I’m either at the gym, baking, attending a briefing, or at a Bible study.  I suppose in the end I could argue that I am a more well-rounded person, though I hardly lack much of a depth of knowledge or expertise on anything.  Writing 1000 words a day just happens to be my latest ploy to make the time go by and keep myself, especially my mind active and busy.  

            319 words done, assuming that I don’t go back and revise or delete anything that I have previously written.  Will I allow myself to do such things as revise? I don’t know.  I pondered the question for a few minutes as I walked back from lunch and wondered if I should set any ground rules for myself, but the thought of rules seemed to hinder the freedom to think and write, so I dismissed the idea.  What will I write about?  I don’t know.  There are many things I don’t know at the moment. 

            This morning I went for a jog at 5:30am.  Although I don’t like waking up early and I am still not a huge fan of running, if I do have to run I would rather run when it is cool outside. At 5am the temperature outside was 81 degrees, and by 7am it had dropped to 77 degrees.  I do believe that is the first time I’ve seen the temperature in the 70s in what seems like a very long time.  The temperature is now once again up past 100 degrees, but the highs for the past couple of days have been below 110, which is another new thing. 

            524 words.  Perhaps over the next few days I’ll drop the required number of words down to 500…and then 200…and in the end grow tired of sitting down to write and forget about the whole idea. 

            My mind has gone blank at the moment and I can’t think of what else to write.  College football season starts this coming weekend, which also happens to be Labor Day weekend.  Normally I don’t care a whole lot about college football, but this year I am a tiny bit interested in the whole thing since it will make the time go by faster, though the only teams I care about are Army and Michigan. 

A couple of weeks ago I received a package in the mail from my friend Anne, who happens to be in Cambridge, England at the moment getting her masters degree.  The package was full of delicious food ranging from candy bars and short cake to dried fruit, but it also contained a book called “Jesus, Safe Tender Extreme.”  In the letter that she included with the package she wrote that she was sending the book along because she found it to be a refreshing and useful look at Christian life written in a common matter without the holier-than-thou and above-this-world attitude that many Christian writers tend to end up taking.  Though I’ve only made it to page 100 due to limited reading time, most of it done while eating lunch in the DFAC, I must say that I agree with Anne’s assessment.  The author, Adrian Plass, writes in a manner that elicits in me a feeling as though I’ve found someone who’s thought structure is the same as my own.  Not only is what he writing of interest to me, but I also enjoy the way he writes.  He’s genuine in his mannerisms, not trying to put on a front or pretend to be something that he’s not.  In particular I’ve enjoyed his description of a near drowning he once experienced and description of, “The little man with a notebook who lives at the back of my head scribbled busily away, noting with interest the various nuances of panic and fear, the exact sensations that accompany drowning, and the emotions evoked by the imminent loss of those whom you love.  He was just on the point of starting a new piece under the heading ‘First Encounters with God’ when I managed to struggle free from my trap.”  I often feel as though I myself has a little man in my head jotting down notes on whatever is going on in my life as to record them for later use.  Of course, I do not often get to writing, especially lately, so most of those notes go the way of my notes in real life and end up set aside to be forgotten.

I must admit that I cheated a bit with today’s 1000 words.  I wrote the previous paragraph, totaling 362 words, yesterday.  The commo blackout is finally over and so I may post this entry on my blog.  1,035.