Why I Write

Alright Blogger, let's get to know each other.

My name is Riley O'Boyle, son of Brian and Martha O'Boyle. I've identified myself with writing ever since I took a pencil to paper for my own benefit. I began writing a journal in the 5th grade because of a girl I liked, and I kept writing in my journal because of Rachel Scott, a girl who died in the Columbine shootings.

Her dad came to speak at my middle school, telling the story of Rachel's kindness and profound effect on people. In particular, he told us that her legacy was fueled largely by what she wrote in her journals. He encouraged us to start our own.

I didn't necessarily expect to be killed in a school shooting, but I thought, if something ever did happen, my folks would probably appreciate the words coming from such a reserved child. I figured even if some tragedy never struck, (which it didn't) it would offer my future self a unique opportunity to understand life through the lens of a younger, simpler Riley's wisdom.

So, I wrote every day. Mostly I would take a half hour every night to summarize what happened, but on the more inspired nights, I would write about how in love I was with this particular girl or that. Occasionally, my thoughts would wander outside the realm of daily chores and girls, but the central theme continued to be the over-dramatic tuggings that women had on my heart.

I guess I wanted to scrapbook my life. Regularly writing to create a working history that I could refer back to in order to more effectively recall events and maintain an accurate mental timeline. I didn't have any sort of plan or long-term goal to maintain this the rest of my life, but I did it, and I didn't see any reason to stop.

This whole practice worked very well up until I was hired to work in a kitchen at a summercamp. Being busy as I was in a room I shared with another person, I didn't have the time to write every single night. It was only in the quieter moments that I took up a pen and dusted off my journal, documenting only the most significant moments, thoughts, or feelings.

My whole "write only the important stuff" attitude lasted the Summer. For the most part, I picked up a regular journaling schedule when I arrived back home that Fall for school. This continued right back into the following Summer, when I once more adopted a prioritized method of quietly documenting my life.

That Summer, I dealt with particularly deep emotional stirrings involving past relationships and shaky prospective relationships, and so whenever I did write, I wrote heavily with the intent of purging myself of this constipated emotional buildup. I developed a new style of writing, in which I created a sort of Riley Guidebook, documenting any realizations I had about how to cheer myself up, what sorts of choices to avoid, and pulling apart what emphatic lessons I can take from mistakes made.

College is the next part of the story, in which its overwhelming throes of opportunities mixed with lack of a communal structure floors any and all of my focus on writing. All I had was my own bad self and plenty of new people to meet, things to do. There wasn't much time to think, or many happenings to reflect on, so I just lived for a while, only occasionally writing a tidbit here or there.

Not too long into the experience, I applied for a job at the school newspaper, The Edge. While most of my writing energies went into that job, it left something to be desired in the realm of personal expression.

Then along came poetry. I had fiddled around with it before, but it wasn't until I literally had to make time to write for myself that I practiced it more regularly. Poetry allowed for deep complicated feelings to emerge as cliche-fighting battles for new ways to express feelings humans have expressed for thousands of years.

That brings us here, then. I'm stepping away from my job at the paper, and with a wonderful collection of time to take for myself, I'm culminating my composition troubles into understanding how blogs work through practice and reading.

As a budding blogger (ha), myself, I've been spending my unusual excess of free time learning the ins and outs of blogging. Today I took another step, browsing various "Top 25 blogs to follow" lists and "Top 25 ways to make your blog interesting" posts. I figured out how to subscribe and follow different blogs, and am well on my way to producing some of my own wonderful content in the coming days.

Let me then end this entry with a quote from Little Seal, a blog I very quickly have grown fond of:
"I am filled with a complicated hope, which may be, I believe, the essence of love. "