yeah, this is how much I suck at doing work

For some reason today I was thinking back about the first real story I ever wrote. It was kind of late in life, considering I'd always been good at and liked writing and wanted to be "A Writer".

It was my...second year of college? I think so. I was taking my first writing class, Fiction, one of the big 3 of lower division writing (the others: Non-fiction, and....I would swear there were 3. Personal Narrative? Isn't that Non-fiction? Whatevers, UCSD. OH SHIT. I suck: Poetry. Poetry. Well, of course that's the one I forgot. That might even have been my first. But it was fake. You hardly even had to write poetry.). Ok, so....
my first grown-up story. I'd done some things that I guess could have been called stories, but they were...I don't know. Most anything I had any real aspirations for I never finished. In fact, everything. Me and self-doubt, long-term relationship.

So I was freaked the hell out by this fiction class, for which we had to write a piece, like for reals. I worked hard, and all these tiny things I'd collected in my head for whenever I would write a real story, they all came together, and the story came out, pages and pages, and it had a flow, it had a heft I guess, there's this thing Bob Dylan said about songs, that a song is anything that can walk by itself.

We had review groups for our rough drafts, and the day we were going to go over mine, before we were even like officially all gathered together some of the people were telling me good things. I don't remember what. All I remember are the looks on their faces, which were like, "Oh. You're a writer writer." Respect. And it wasn't just a one-time thing; several times I've impressed people with my writing.

My teaching studies are slowing, and I'm remembering the promise I made to myself during one of my more stressful times this year, that I wouldn't forget the writing. That I'd never think of myself as not a writer, that I'd treat it properly, as one of the things that saves me over and over, maybe not my living but something I do to live. And, though it's not the best reason to write, I really want to get that look again.

MAYBE WITH MY ACTION RESEARCH PAPER, I WILL ILLICIT THE LOOK.
ha ha
Oh I kill me. But no more distraction, no sir. Totally doing the homework, now.