Oh distraction!

Right now, I'm supposed to be working on a very important essay due Thursday. Instead, I'm sitting at my favourite coffee shop drinking a large cup of peanut butter crunch coffee and surfing the internet. Yay distraction!

For whatever reason, it's nearly impossible for me to write at home, so I came to the coffee shop to work on my essay about what was the Pioneer Inn in Oshkosh. In my interpretive and persuasive writing (aka: editorials, reviews and investigative reporting) class, we're working on a class project about what to do with the waterfront in that city, with each of us choosing a different site. I chose the Pioneer because my mom worked there years ago, so I got to hear all of her stories about how wonderful it was, and the fact that it used to be so high-class and wonderful, and now it's just a vacant pile of nothing is pretty fascinating to me. I have all of my research done, and it is a story I'm excited to tell, but I'm in the middle of a major case of writer's block.

Normally, writing at this coffee shop comes very easy. There's just something about the atmosphere that puts me in the mood to write. Actually, I suppose it's working right now, but just not for the writing I NEED to do. Instead I'm wasting time with my piles of notes cluttering the table, with all of my highlited phrases taunting me while I write in my blog about how distracted I am and how I really need to stop procrastinating. I wrote a few words, but it's so hard to force myself to write papers when I'm just not feeling it. Grrrrr. Good thing there are only 2-1/2 weeks left in the semester.

I also take comfort in the fact that next year, I only need electives. And not that many of them either. Only taking classes that I want to take makes the paper writing/endless readings/sitting in class/studying so much easier. I have a good feeling about this fifth year of college. Not being super-burdened with school also is allowing me to take on more at the paper. Next semester, I'm still the copy chief and writer for every section except sports, but I also get to take on the additional role of assistant news editor. I get to write the police blotter column, which is by far the most read of anything in the A-T. Yay!

It's always these last few weeks when I'm constantly writing papers for political science classes, articles for the A-T and journalism classes and everything in between that force me to rethink my brilliant idea to become a writer when I grow up. Then the semester ends, and I develop amnesia about how much I've hated writing in the past few weeks. And I still want to be a writer when I grow up.