David’s Blog

For nearly two decades, professional literature plagued my life in an exponential manner. Waking up, I’d face another day of perpetual torment struggling to understand these “marvels” of classic literature, Hatchet , The Scarlet Letter , and whatever else the teacher found in her smoking, black-leather book all English teachers seem to continuously study.

Growing into my (relatively) old age, I’ve realized books are boring and lack any interest while magically sucking the enthusiasm out of me on contact. That’s my opinion on the larger scale of books, and I catch heat from many teachers for that, but regarding the other small percentage, I seem to become consumed into the pages of the cover floating in the cold, deep-blue sea – bullets whizzing by my head like rain.

Let’s be honest here, I have a small attention span for non-technological things. If a book lacks action and suspense or goes into too much detail, my mind, in an act of self-preservation, switches gears and begins thinking about the first noise or object in sight. If a reasonable and nice teacher did exist, perhaps the wonderful result of some bio-engineered science experiment, they’d present me with books that’d captivate me with action, while holding a knife to my throat for just a tad of suspense.

Never being introduced to my definition of “good” writing, my literature wouldn’t even be worthy to hold your squeaky, unstable kitchen table stable. My writing always seemed to remind me of that cliché phrase “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” not in the way you’d expect either, that single cliché phrase was better than my entire piece of writing.

It wasn’t until I had a small series, well two, teachers who introduced me and supported my lacking endeavors to find my literary voice that my writings started gaining lives of their own. Mrs. Fennessy, that gray-headed witch she was, must have thought I was Hansel at her gingerbread house thinking she could just “eat me up.” I had her just one year; she retired; nonetheless, that was the hottest year of that school. She kept me in that boiling kettle until she thought I was “ready.” The second teacher, a typical busy-bodied superwoman, Mrs. Mather, during my senor high school year, understood my lack of literary personality and a major need for a variety of viewpoints. Throughout that last year of middle school, my writing improved radically becoming a style of which this piece endorses.

I will definitely profit off my personal literary development during my times of redundant, mentally stressful actions to make money for the American government, also known as an occupation to the larger population. Software engineers are not battling the English language as much as the unfortunate journalists; however, we software engineers are largely required to document our source code and the burning, evil, bureaucratic paperwork. Granted, employers do not encourage a substantial amount of personality in any type of writing, such as people hired for administration positions; nonetheless, individuality harmonizes a warm, fuzzy feeling for the uninterested readers.