You can be an influence on yourself!

Have you ever had those moments where you remember a snippet of information but can't remember where you picked it up? Was it from a friend, a co-worker, or the chatty woman behind you in the fast food line? Was it on the radio, the TV or the Internet?

I guess where you picked it up isn't important. Remembering it is the real challenge! What will often happen with me is, I'll be reading, writing, cleaning or about a dozen other random things and suddenly...a word, quote, saying, funny line or joke will pop into my head out of nowhere. Does this happen to you? More than likely if it's a word I'll feel a sudden compulsion to look it up. Usually it'll be one I know but can't remember the definition for. Very vexing in my book! Often times I'll be writing and a word will pop into my mind and it'll be the perfect one I need. I love words to an extreme level and am always on the look out for new ones.

If I recall correctly I was college hunting online and was perusing a certain college's website when I stumbled upon a quote of certain notability. I'm sure we've all encountered those quotes that make us pause in our mad dash of life, force our minds to mull it over and maybe even prod our hearts to feel the emotion said quote wants to pull out of us. After all this it becomes more than a quote but a feeling, a memory, a reflection on your life, a fresh perspective on things.

One such quote for me came towards the end of my online Creative Writing class. As a whole - and perhaps this comes as no surprise! - the class was one of the most rewarding I've gone through. I loved the assignments because they challenged me and pushed me into "rooms" of my "writing mansion" which I had tentatively peeked into in the past but had never been so bold as to step into them, swinging the door wide and displacing any doubt. I credit the class with opening my mind up to the possibility of writing in third person - something I'd never tried before! - and also got me back into writing poetry, which prior the class I had never fully understood and had shied away from. The quote was one by Anne Tyler and was found in the textbook we had to read from for the class: "I write because I want to have more than one life." That is exactly how I feel. I love throwing myself into my character's worlds and feeling like I'm walking and living beside them. I love spinning entire towns, lives, neighborhood's and relationships out of nothing, and make it all seem so real to me. I love the places that books take me and how I can so easily remove myself from my own world and place myself inside a character's head. For anyone who is a writer I'm sure you can relate!

Back to the quote I mentioned at the beginning of this post, like I said before, I remember stumbling briefly upon it while perusing a college's website. Somehow, amidst the labyrinth of other college site's I delved into, the quote stuck with me, much like a word I don't know, or a certain witty line in a book while haunt me. What bothers me more than not remembering exactly where I found the quote, is that I can't recall it word for word. Which of course is something you can't naturally expect right? Apparently I never learned this. To briefly insert a most famous quote: "I am my own worst enemy." After all, there's no one harder on you than yourself right? Such quotes and human habits are two foundations upon which many of my story's characters have taken shape.

Even though the quote is vaguely floating in my mind like remnants of cigar smoke lingering around the stools at a bar after the last call I still find it notable enough to talk about in my most recent blog post. It talked about how our habits, passions, hobbies, interests and activities as children can serve as guidelines as to what we'll eventually do in life or consider as a career or make our life long passion. To give you more of an idea of what I'm talking about, I'll give you my own example of this.

When I was a child my favorite toy was a white plastic horse I got in Hardee's drive-thru. Growing up my room was running rampant with horses, and even today horses are everywhere! There's six alone on my computer desk right now! My love of horses - albeit naturally inherited in thousands of girls around the world - has led me to enroll in 4-H, drawing classes, they've inspired many of my stories, and like I've mentioned before horses were my main focus in my senior-project for high school and what led me to Sunrise Horse Farm in Reedsville where I still volunteer. I eventually hope to have a horse of my own and get riding again. It's been too long!

Another aspect that led to my current hobbies is my writing. I began writing in middle school. My first story was entitled Eye of the Storm. It revolved around the lives of two sisters and their father who lived in one tornado-prone state or another, I forget. Back then I obviously had yet to master the finer points of writing - and I'm not claiming to now it all even today! - but even when my writing was at it's most naive my teachers saw something special and worth nurturing there. Many of them told me they "knew they'd be reading my books someday". What child doesn't cling to words like that and dream? I still have those notebooks where I started that story long ago. The words are smugged, the handwriting is horrible, and the sentences are rambling and I get a good laugh out of reading it all over but I know even way back in sixth grade I had a passion for writing, and even though I literally had no idea how to go about writing a story, I tried anyway! Because there was something within me that said...you love doing this. You need to do this. It's been that way ever since. I am now looking to major in Creative Writing and am checking out different colleges in hopes of finding one with a good program.

Perhaps tying in closely with writing because of its creative aspect is graphic design. Two blog posts ago I talked about my passion for the now-disbanded Christian pop group Jump5. Their music, albeit geared towards middle schoolers and blatantly cheery, generally substance-less bubble gum pop was just plain "feel good" music and with all of that aside did present some valuable lessons and messages that any kid at that age needed to hear.

For how much I loved them, I also loved expanding on their flamboyant CD designs. I would have my Mom photo-copy them at work, then I would cut and paste them onto cardstock. I would make posters, cards, my own personalized CD covers or anything I could think of. I'm sure I'm not the only one to do such a thing. After all, haven't we all been there? We love a particular band or artist so much we emblazon their name or moniker upon everything and soon our rooms are covered in their memorabilia. I still have some of the things I made, and even won a contest when I sent in a poster I had made. I got a notebook - which I still have! - and two folders, which sit unused in one box or another in my room.

The point is, my love designing may have started with my obsession for Jump5, or even before, but today I love designing things online and will often spend hours in Word or PowerPoint designing things for the heck of it. I love making my own Christmas cards and will naturally pay attention to even the smallest details. I am somewhat of a perfectionist and curse myself when something doesn't come out to my standards. I'm naturally detail-oriented and perhaps this dominant characteristic of myself is what has fueled passions for both creative writing and graphic design. In my writing because I often pour out the details in my stories when an image of a scene pops in my mind and I inexplicably feel I have to convey every last thing, and in my graphic design because I'll add that extra flourish or little detail. I operate on the notion that if it doesn't feel done, then it probably isn't. Just like in my writing, I almost always have to stop either at a break between scenes in a chapter, or at the end of a chapter. Anywhere else and I feel like the story is too-wide open, and because I don't know when I'll return to it, it'll make it all the harder to go back and pick it up again.

Maybe you see yourself in my habits and passions, or perhaps you find yourself reflecting on your own childhood hobbies and what they've transformed into today. Look back on those hobbies and passions! Like me, you might find that you're still tapping the same vein you were back then. For all that's changed over the years in our lives, some things stay the same!