The First Lines

New thing of the day, wrote the first few paragraphs of my first graduate paper.

The dread, oh the dread of writing a paper. The usual procrastination and writer's block, along with the non-motivation to start. Now, with under 2 weeks to go, I decided to suck it up, do the research I needed and start the paper. The only way I could possibly do it, was to go to the library, away from all home and fun distractions.

The library was fantastic. It was just the space and quiet I needed to focus. I logged on to our school library's database and accessed the research articles I needed. Despite the dread and the bore of the class, the topic I chose had a lot of interesting and heated debate and arguments, so it was a good research read. I read a few choice and interesting articles, and it got my brain warmed up and humming.

Then I hit my zone. The part where your mind and ideas start to flow - so open Microsoft Word. I got down a rough outline, some concepts and a full page of paragraphs and a blueprint for my paper. Then the library was closing, so we packed up, came home. I was more productive in that 1.5 hours at the library, then I was a week at home "trying" to work on my paper. Again the library is where I can focus, my happy place. 

The research, the topics, all that forced reading and thinking, the process of writing was really good for me. It was a healthy brain exercise. I've been very soft lately. The job isn't exactly creative or challenging. My personal pursuits are a bit juvenile. So grad school is a needed dose of exercise for the mind.

It was really good and I need to spend more hours studying and writing in the library. It was fantastic to start researching, thinking and writing intelligently again. I suppose, the journey of a thousand words begins with the first letter.