Remembering Would Be Helpful

I’m trying to be more conscious of actively remembering. It’s hard to focus on days like this, the humidity makes the air feel like you're walking through a swamp. The heat from the sun cooking your brains like scrambled eggs under your hat.

But I want to be a writer, right? I need to write to be a writer. I need to come up with ideas and remember them to write them. Maybe it's the pressure of sitting down to actually do it that wipes my mind empty. I feel like when I’m puttering around or driving, the ideas never stop flooding into my head. Ideas love to come to me when I don't have a pencil handy. So I will practice remembering – it’s not my strong suit.

I do find that reflection helps, which sounds the same as remembering but it’s different. Remembering is triggered by an external stimulus, it happens to you. I see a dog - I think about my dog - I remember that time my dog got sprayed by a skunk for the first time. Reflection is self-guided, you’re choosing the stimulus that will trigger remembering. You ask yourself a question. That question shapes all the following thoughts. Why do I like the smell of skunk? Because one week after my dog got sprayed for the first time, my cousin was watching him and he got sprayed again. It’s a funny story that I’ll tell some other time. But I’m now remembering other funny skunk stories and realizing that all interactions I’ve had with that scent were funny stories and good times. Now I know myself a tiny bit better than I did five minutes ago.

So why do I want to be a writer? There's an excitement attached to the idea of being a writer that I can't quite explain. The romanticism of being able to express my soul in words on paper that others will read, and if I do my job well, will be moved by. The permanence of the written word contrasted by the fragility of the paper that makes up the book. The fact that people have been reading the same great stories for generations.

Every since I learned to read in the living room at my childhood home, helped along by Dr. Seuss and his friend Sam-I-Am, I've been addicted to the rush that comes with reading a great book. Feeling immersed in a world, vivid imagery and sensory experience. Meeting characters that you feel intimately connected to. Stories that hold mysteries that need unraveling. Have you ever had that sensation when you read, where *snaps fingers just like that, hours have past, hundreds of pages have been turned, but you can't remember even moving your hands, slowly you come back to reality, adjusting to your eyes looking at the bright white paper as if you haven't been staring at it the whole time.

That is something I want to be apart of, to invoke that feeling, to create something worth sharing. As I work towards this goal, part of my process will be reflection and I look forwards to the insight I’ll get and sharing some of it here. And I’ll definitely keep remembering to practice remembering, I’ll keep you posted on how that goes. Hopefully.

Until next time.