paragraphs.

The snow is melted away and the sun blinds commuters as it bounces playfully off towers of glass and metal.

It’s spring.
The baseball field on my commuter route is a dark shade of green & uniformed individuals can be seen taking their position on the short, fresh carpet.

I don’t believe it for a second.
77 degrees means nothing to me but I keep a skeptical eye to the sky waiting for some unexpected snowfall or a sudden gust of chilly wind.

This is the windy city, they say.
They say beautiful weather isn’t supposed to come until May, even June.
So I don’t trust these bright blue days one bit.

My dreams of weather have taken a sabbatical, now I dream of the new quarter we began this week but these dreams are usually filled with fear rather than longing.
I’d like to go back to my dreams of rain, sunshine & heatwaves.

The self-doubt has already begun & it’s only Wednesday. How is this possible, you ask. Well, I think we all have a little bit of self-doubt now & then, I just give into mine & let it overtake me like a huge tsunami wave washing away my tiny occupied houses of joy.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I know I’m talking too much already. And no, I will not delete unnecessary words. Let’s keep the second-guessing of my writing skills restricted to the newsroom.

Here, in this tiny little blog world, I’ll sprinkle my commas around sporadically, use as many syllables as possible in one sentence & (if we’re lucky) I may even have my paragraphs as unorganized as the thoughts bumping up against one another in my head.

If I’m not careful, I’ll lose my voice.
And I’m quite positive that some great writer at some time or another said something very clever about how writers have to maintain their voice, their style. Unfortunately, this writer has a bad case of carpal tunnel thanks to her diligence to research and toning her upper arms so no additional research will occur today.

Instead, I’ll sit here on my Styrofoam-filled coach as my toes soak in the golden sun filtering through my living room window & I’ll just say this – sometimes, i get so wrapped up in pleasing others that i forget about my love of writing.

This quarter, I’ll be covering immigration issues in Chicago (we can get together later to squeal about how excited I am about this beat). I discovered as I sat in class this morning listening to my professor tell me what he does & doesn’t like in an article right after telling us to write as we want – that I’m not writing for him. Though he is a very nice man, at the end of the day, writing a story to please him wouldn’t make me happy.

And com’on now - my main goal in life is happiness.
What would make me happy? Writing an article for myself & for my readers. I write stories for the sources, the people who give me the time of day to talk. I write for myself, to produce a piece I’m proud to put my name on. And heck, I write for the readers, because we all need to learn a little something new, become a little inspired and maybe a smidge entertained.

I'm a better writer when I'm not worried so much about pleasing others.

This one’s for you guys.

(pssst...the photo's from squidoo.com)