"It is Written" Throughout the days, so many ways. "Use Your Words" - Part 2

The Written Word, In Prompt You: As in word forms, forms of words...taking shape... to shape sentences, paragraphs, paraphrasing, pages, post-its, posts, promissories (for congressional members), treatises, treaties, entreats...theses.......dissertations! All in a day's or...life works, as in a "a body or work" (see January 10th here). So much to write about, in so many ways, not enough days -- they say that if you have the joy or reading or writing, you'll never run out of things to do. But what about if you have both?! Suffice to say, here, not enough space or time, which can, of course, lead to a great deal of frustration, approach a state of confusion as to what to prioritize, approximate a condition of madness (all of which I have written to you about, here). Exemplified here, when, with pen in hand, I disclosed you how I have a "love/hate" relationship with my "Outside" magazine (you may have to scan through a maze of posts to locate), in that I love, embrace the idea of going and doing just about everything depicted in every month's issue, while hating the awareness I will never have enough time in my life to accomplish such feats of feet. Which has, of course, led to people creating the now ubiquitous "bucket lists" of things they want to accomplish before they, themselves, kick theirs...all of this to in turn prompt you and me to appreciate the IMPACT! your words can have, which come to be associated with you alone, setting you apart from the crowd, when committing them to print. So, go ahead, and...

"Try, Tire Your Hand" This wasn't exactly what our high school language arts teacher said, but it is essentially in retrospection, what he was prepping us for when, on the first day of class, he invited us to "get out a piece of paper and pencil, choose a color, and describe it in vivid detail to someone who has never had the gift of sight" 😕Followed by, "Oh, BTW, you'll have 35 minutes to complete this assignment..."😓! After experiencing the emotions depicted by the featured emoji's (which were, of course, not yet invented, even imagined by us yet, but certainly experienced), I got down to business, of putting down some thoughts on paper...imperfect but at least an attempt to engage this part of my brain. Which turned out to be the point, as he eventually, about 37 minutes later, while collecting the papers, hearing the collective groans, sighs of relief as well as resignation, informed us, "These are the muscles in your brains and hands we're going to flex this year..." 😔. And, even though I was prepared for it, as my sister had this teacher a year prior, he began the next class with "Oh, BTW, while we are exercising our hands and minds with impromptus and Shakespeare (he was also the teacher who managed to gain my appreciation for reading, analyzing, appreciating a wide range of lit, including "The Bard", reading between the lines and behind the scenes...), you'll also be drafting and eventually completing a thesis! which will only be appreciated once you are in college..." Kind of like some other life lessons our parents were conveying through the spoken and written words..."You'll only appreciate this..." Well, my 'epistle epiphany' was realized BIG TIME when these kinds of exercises were experienced while having to write essays in many college level classes (some of which were timed like midterms), and eventually, a Master's level thesis which I thought was my final product ("can I be done now?!) but turned out to be more of a 'penultimate', as about seven years later, I completed, successfully defended (yep, that's what they call it), and had my doctoral dissertation signed off by all my committee members -- signed, sealed, and delivered😌😄😎! Now, can I be done?! Not quite, as I then tried, tired, so many other parts of my brain and hand, eventually to include text to voice and vice versa, professional reports, and even...a BLOG! An endless array of options for...

Exercising your writes: In my experience and "humble opinion" (always a good conversation starter, whether audio or in written form, voice to text or otherwise), you should not hesitate to write down your thoughts, especially those that consume you, for later consumption, either by yourself for additional reflection or others for consideration, enlightenment, persuasion even. But, assuming you will have more than the 35 minutes our LA teacher allotted, as I conveyed to you two days ago here (hoping you would hear my voice come through, text-to-voice), one should at least hesitate to organize your thoughts, use words that accurately convey them, and those that will have the most IMPACT! in the allotted space. Which is, of course, just like in public speaking, dependent on your audience and primary purpose, and includes the IMPACT! of tone and cadence, even in writing. Also paralleling public speaking, no matter what form of writing and no matter how much tech support is available ("spell check" being the first, followed by "voice recognition" software that can guide us with paragraphs, etc.), what words you use and how you combine them reflect YOU, how YOU in turn will be judged. Which is why I continue to implore those in my audience, whether singular in my office or collectively in a BLOG! that...you should never put in a text or tweet something you are not prepared to elaborate on in an email...never email something you would not say on the phone...not say something on the phone you would not say in person...now to include "don't say something at a distance, masked, that you would not say face-to-face..." All this prior to clicking "Send", "Print" or, in my case, "Publish"! Which are all, of course, addendums to what our mothers and grandmothers taught us, "If you can't say something nice..." Which brings me back in time to an earlier era, to a type of writing which, while having fallen out of style, never out of favor...

Showing Interest (see 1/28): No matter what form it takes, how brief, even in the form of emoji's, it always pays dividends on one end or the other, to simply show interest (versus, whining, opining). And finally, before running out of space, "timing out" here, speaking of writing -- literally, literary...in the time it takes to draft and redraft an email you want to have IMPACT! (this was empirically studied in the early days of "word processing"), including to grandma for example, you could instead write a brief note by hand, or at worst a hand drawn emoji...whereupon receiving it, the recipient will likely exclaim, "Look Harold, it's in their own hand...a cute picture, a highly personalized arrangement of emoji's; I think it means THANK YOU!" Kind of like the cave dwellers left us to contemplate...