I used to write almost every day.  It was a part of me.  It was what I was good at.  I wanted to be a journalist, because it was exciting and challenging.  I loved creating a product, something that was mine, and providing it to the community.  But over time, it became a burden.  I was stressed out all the time, and it was because of this "job" I had.  I didn't have the time for many of the other activities I would have liked to participate in.  And because of my anxiety, I was afraid that I would never make it in the cutthroat journalism business.  I felt it had been an enormous waste of time.

When I discovered geology, I became interested and engaged once more.  In studying the Earth, I found something in me that I thought I had lost.  I spent the next several years throwing myself completely into the Earth sciences, and journalism was all but forgotten. 

But I was still writing.  I concluded my graduate student experience with a thesis and two published papers under my belt.  I remember getting the first draft of my thesis back from my advisor, and him telling me it was better written than his first draft as a Master's student.  I was very proud of this compliment.  Naturally, I am not exactly scientist material.  It's just something that happened along the way.  Writing is my true talent.

I love words.  The way they sound, what they mean (especially when they have multiple meanings), the way they can be strung together to make endless sentences.  It's fascinating.  I also like how letters can sound different in different words, depending on where they are placed within a word.  Think about it, it's cool.
 
Let's face it.  I am a huge word nerd, and often fused my love of words with my love of geology, as evidenced by this old post from September 22, 2006.

waiting for the epoxy again
This week was a busy week.  I... learned some things about structure, taught some kids about minerals (and got a good evaluation! yay!), got my soil chemistry book in the mail and was actually kind of excited to read it, got a little better at catching a baseball, and threw one that hurt Caro's hand, was late to a meeting and got my name on the board, learned how to save people's lives, drank a lot of mountain dew, got really excited about mineralogy (and was confused as to why no one else seemed to be), bought some really expensive chai tea, handed in a lot of forms, made some new goals, lost my office mate, said goodbye to Nathan...

I felt very strange this week.  I'm not really sure how to describe it.  Maybe happy?  Productive?  But I'm not really sure if I was productive or not.  But anyway, I dunno, I was thinking about geology words and how they're so grand sounding, especially the way people here say them, like provenance and detrital.  Such good words.  Hmm, that's kinda random, but I like words I guess.  I think I am getting excited about geology again.  Like real geology.  Not just 101 stuff or how to present a paper on some topic or another.  But the actual act of learning new things about the earth.  I feel like the way I did when I first started learning about optical mineralogy, with the oil and becke lines and birefringence and all that stuff.  that was some good smelling oil.

I love this, and I love that I felt that way at least once.  It gives me hope.