Write Now

Day 12: Your Passion

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A solitary act, writing is taking the time to delve into one's mind and explaining everything carefully, slowly, with no pressure to hastily give out information or comments or ideas that may not be sound or true to one's character.

I believe that everything I have ever written reflected who I was at the time it was written, this included. I may cringe when reading back through entries of my diary from when I was thirteen, wonder why I spent so long writing seemingly meaningless pages of nonsense about some boy I was obsessed with, question my need for long/short sentences and lack of grammar and punctuation, but at the time, all of that was who I was, and I kept at it. My passion for writing has stayed with me throughout my whole life and I don't think it will ever go away. I think that is a passion worth having, and I am glad it is mine.

I don't necessarily expect or want anyone to read what I write - it is a privilege and a compliment any time anyone does, even if the feedback is bad. I think it is safe to say that whatever I write comes from a very honest and personal place within me, and that in itself exposes a certain vulnerability - in any writer. But what is the use in that?

I think we are all desperate to share parts of ourselves - our experiences, our thoughts, our dreams and ambitions with other people, and I have figured that these three things get in the way:

• Social norms
• Time
• Developments in technology  

It might just be me who has difficulty opening up to any old person about what I write about on here. Who cares? Why would they want to know? Well, why does the internet need to know? Why am I writing this post? Because no one actually has to read it, but when you speak, I think social norms have made us polite enough not to say 'Sorry, I don't really want to listen anymore' and change the subject/walk away, like you can do with a blog post by clicking 'x' at the corner of the screen.

We always have time for small talk. The weather's horrible isn't it? Or, isn't it lovely today? How have you been? You rarely answer truthfully, unless you genuinely are ok every single time someone asks. We've always got other things to talk about, and only after we've gotten through all that jargon we can get to the good stuff - the stuff we really want to talk about, but don't have the time - and do they really want to know, anyway? The forecast for snow is much more interesting, right?

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Developments in technology continue to amaze and concern me. I am currently in the process of trying to reign in as much information as possible about my personal life from the world wide web. I know this blog partially represents me as a person as well as me as a writer/reviewer, but on here I don't have to change my status to 'in a relationship' the moment I start seeing someone or tell all my followers what I ate for dinner. This is, I feel, quite simply because over sharing on social network sites makes us lazy. We don't feel the need to actually communicate with people directly. Another contradiction I am making, as this blog post is aimed at a wide audience but you see what I mean - I am not sharing information that does not concern or interest you (I hope). Because, who really cares who so and so is going out with? Why can't they just tell people?

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Ultimately, I feel, as an introvert writing is my way of telling the world who I am without using my voice. For some reason as I have grown older my confidence as a speaker has dropped dramatically, and I am terrified of talking half of the time, but at a computer, with a pen and paper I can write my life story, right down to the nitty gritty details of my most painful memories and things I would never say to anyone, and let just about anyone read it. It might just be me, but I'm sure there are other people who have similar feelings on the matter.

What is your passion? Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Do you think there is a link between loud people and quiet people liking/disliking written and verbal communication?