Who i am

Writing became a part of my life at an early age. In fifth grade, Ms. Ellersick assigned us to keep a journal. That simple page-a-day writing began my love affair with the written word.  Over the years I learned the art of journalism and became intimately familiar with the pressure of a deadline. Late nights at the newspaper, in the sports “corner” of the open room, I began to understand the life of a journalist.  It was there, after wet afternoons keeping stats on the cold bleachers at high school football games and talking to coaches about “the turning point of the game” and their “rushing yardage” I learned what it meant to become an "expert" in something I knew nothing about.  It was in that newsroom drinking Diet Coke from the break-room vending machine that I became hooked on the rush of “having written.”    I don’t particularly enjoy the writing process… it is tiresome and tedious.  But once the meat of an article has been urged – no, forced – out of my brain and has laid rest on paper or computer screen, I relish in the complex art of molding, shaping, cutting, and perfecting that dim-witted first draft.  And then, when it is finally complete, the sun shines and the birds sing and voila…I have written.
       Past tense.
              Wonderful past tense.