Obligation

Yes, this is an obligation post. Posting on the blog has been heavy on my mind lately and to be honest there's no room for it on my mind. I've got 120 students to think about now, which means 120 families to think about, homework lessons, tests, quizzes, worksheets, drills, speeches, lectures, lessons, and probably a lot more that I can't think of right now. So, I'm posting here to make sure that at least someone is still reading and checking in every now and again. One of these days it will get to be regular...or die out completely--it's pretty 50 50 right now I think. Anyway, this is not too foreign to the practiced writer. We all at one point or another have had to fill an obligation. Writing-based obligations are always harder for me than most others though. I feel such a strong sense of need to attach emotion and passion to writing, because writing is such a strong medium of communication and expression. As the freedom fighting protagonist of V for Vendetta states, "Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who listen, the annunciation of truth." Words are the method of understanding what is fundamentally important to our being. They provide, for us, an understanding of what is true, what should be felt from the depths of our very souls. And obligation writing tears at the fibers of this writing structure threatening to unravel this marvel of a tapestry (hows that for a metaphor). So how do we get around it. Put simply--we do not. Instead we continue to write and think and edit and write some more. We work and we write until the passion returns. For here is the beautiful thing about something that is essentially (in the second definition kind of way) built on truths, emotions, and passionate fire--it cannot die a death of obligation and boredom. No writer, if he continues to write, can lose what is most important about the words he puts on the page or impresses upon the screen. Like the ash-covered coals of an unkempt fire, the passion is nestled deep in the heart and mind of the writer still warm ready to spark anew with words of truth pouring forth.