Cramping My Style

Although I do find a lot of satisfaction in studying, there is still one way that this post-high school journey has detrimentally affected me.

The amount of material I read in textbooks severely and heavily influences what I want to write. When the school year starts, my sentences become desiccate of any personality. Commas and semicolons are replaced by periods and mentally, I become syntactically locked. Rigid and concrete, the wall solidifies. I may try to drive my fist through it, but the wall would always win that matchup.

It’s something that I noticed not too long ago. The feeling is similar to being in a packed car. I’ve been packed into a 15-passenger van on a hot summer day and squeezed between 5 people in a row that only seats 3. The textbooks are, literally, cramping my style.

I do try to blog daily, but because of the books that squish me blue, what comes out isn’t exactly what I want. Again, the wall is there to stop me. Painfully, it does. Play-Doh is a fun medium to play with. When it becomes hard, it’s hard to enjoy.

I think, subconsciously, I thought of a solution. It’s funny how I think that I think I solved a problem. Recently, I finished C.S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters,” and I mentioned that in a previous blog post. Last week, I picked up another one of Clive’s works, “Mere Christianity.” My mind may have been operating below the speed of tree sap oozing down the bark on a winter day, but the read was stimulating nonetheless. And, since I have about 3 hours worth of breaks spread between classes, I have a lot of time to sit and chisel through Lewis’ intricate and robust writing style.

Good stuff.