I have a confession to make. This might seem like something silly and dumb, but I’m going to write about it anyway. Prepare for the cheesiest blog post you’ll ever read.
I used to hate people who write with pencils. It’s like a
secret jealously I had. It seemed to always be the same people... who had the
perfect assignments, the perfect projects, perfect examinations, everything
just so perfectly flawless. Literally. I found this frustrating. Why can’t they
write in pen? Where they don’t have to stop and annoy the rest of the class
with their repetitive sharpening of the dull lead in a middle of an exam. Or
leave their eraser shavings all over the desk and ground as they left the room –
so someone who wrote with a pen could come along and throw the shavings to the
ground so the pen writers don’t have to have residue left on their belongings. Or
even worse, some of the pencil writers even had to have a certain kind of
pencil to write with or they would practically refused to write notes for the
class.
Perhaps these pencil writers had a pattern in their lives?
Maybe they ate breakfast every morning because they knew if they didn’t, they
wouldn’t be able to perform to their best of ability for the rest of the day.
To sharpen up a pencil doesn’t sound like a lot of work when you know it will
help make things perform better. Or maybe these pencil writers took the time
every day to do some exercising and self-meditating to make sure their bodies
and minds were in sync with each other. To find the perfect balance in their
lives because they knew the importance of staying healthy. This is probably why
finding the perfect pencil is so important to some people. Or perhaps these
pencil writers had a friend they took the time to talk to – to push the stress and
anxiety out of their lives and to allow things to fall in place, allow the past
to stay, and to keep moving forward in life. If you view the eraser shavings as
fixing mistakes and moving on to succeed rather than a nuisance that is
annoying and needs to be cleaned up so it’s not left as residue for someone
else. There is so many explanations of
why a writer would write with a pencil. To be able to find a balance, fix
mistakes, move forward, and help them ace life without dwelling on their
mistakes and letting others see them.
To a pen writer, this sound absolutely ridiculous. Who has
the time to find the perfect pencil? It’s just lead in the end. To sharpen is a
waste of time. Sometimes it takes several minutes, or even a new pencil when
the lead breaks, to find the perfect end point! And to erase is a joke. Who has
time to flip the pencil around, spend time doing some squiggles around the
mistakes just to correct them… when it is much easier to stroke them out? Why
would someone go to the trouble of fixing the mistakes, when you can finish the
assignment much faster?
I’m almost 19 years
old and I’m just learning how to write with a pencil.
Why?
Because I just realized that ink is permanent. The scratched out mistakes are always going to be there no matter how many strokes you try to make. In fact, the more strokes there is, the worse it looks. No matter how many times I look back at my past, those mistakes are always popping out at me and I try to hide them under more layers of ink. Even white out eventually peels away. Mistakes seem to be worse in pen – maybe it’s just in my mind but I’m beginning to wonder if eventually other people will see these mistakes. And that’s not the kind of person I want to remembered for – the girl who wrote her life in pen.
I want to be a pencil writer. Who have it all together. Who
spends her time preparing for a healthy morning – sharpening my pencil… making things
better. I want to be able to spend time fixing mistakes by erasing them –
dealing with problems as they happen and spend some time to find a better
solution rather than waiting until later to try to eliminate them by strokes of
ink. Because one day someone is going to read my story – my life. And I don’t
all my mistakes popping out at them.
I don’t want to be a pen writer anymore.