Nothing But The Rain

Throughout my life, my hobbies and interests have widely varied. I can remember devouring everything I could about ancient Egypt and dinosaurs in elementary school. This transitioned to drawing and sketching to playing percussion which lead to freestyle biking to golf to learning the guitar. My unending desire for knowledge and the revolving door of activities that engaged me have both given me countless experiences. The changing focus resulted from my starting something new, tearing through it as fast as I could until I felt I had a good handle on it, then being stolen away by something else. Fortunately, the spoils of my sporadic nature have never completely abandoned me when I seemingly ditched them. I love riding my bike when I get the chance, obviously still draw and sketch, occasionally hit the links with my friends, and maintain a prehistoric presence in my life (Winston, duh).

Certain passions, however, have endured throughout my life. One of my greatest can best be described as a love of the story. Since Kindergarten, I have loved to read and have been drawn in by books and stories. From Dr. Seuss to The Boxcar Children and Goosebumps to Scottish detectives, a perpetually walking man, and a sprawling epic, this has grown throughout my years and manifested most obviously in my studying English in college. Yet, my interest in stories has never been confined to just the written word, bound and printed. Movies, TV shows, plays, musicals, bands? They can all show the complex weave of human interactions and emotion. And I love it, being more than willing to commit and dedicate bits of my elusive free time (namely whenever I can't hang out with my wife/friends and my brain can no longer handle studying).

An interesting addition began during college. Rather than merely taking in the stories, I began to produce my own, writing fiction, first for a writing class and then for fun. Much to my chagrin, the time-sinks of life and medical school stopped any continual creative progress. This fact has been sitting my mind, gnawing at my post-central somatosensory gyrus (not really- I'm just in the Brain/Behavior module right now). Throughout the day, I'll imagine bits of scenes, shadows of characters, and inevitably think I should write a story with this. Considering the frequency of my blog updates, you can imagine my success rate (hint: dismal).

Because of this, and in an effort to change it, I'm going to try and write- short stories, scenes, chunks of dialog- and probably post them here. Will these be complete stories? Good stories? Worth reading? I honestly don't know. As any writer or would-be-writer will tell you: writing is hard. It's work; it's tough; but, I think it might be worth it.

In closing: what are some of your favorite stories? Personal stories, books, movies, TV shows, anything. Feel free to post away, if you're out there.



Until next time.