The Driven Word

Why did I start a new blog? It's a question I've been asked several times now, and it's a legitimate question. After all, I spend most my day writing for my job -creating Jewish Treats, composing pieces to post on Huffington Post, etc. I even branched out recently and did a freelance piece. When people ask me what I do in my spare time, I all too often answer that I like to work. When they look at me with pity, I firmly explain that I love writing, particularly about Judaism.

To put it in its simplest form, I love words!

It's always been this way with me. I remember asking my elementary school teachers - I want to say as early as third grade - to read my stories. By the time I finished high school, I had drafted two fantasy novels. (One definitely unpublishably bad, the other might be something with a lot of editing.)

When I was twenty, I started observing Shabbat. In addition to all the other changes this brought to my life, I noticed an odd occurrences.  Each week on Shabbat I was filled with writing inspiration. All sorts of plot lines drifted through my head. If I was as religious as I one day hope to be (religious being a reference to having a deep spiritual connection), I might state that this was obviously my yetzer harah, my evil inclination, trying to lure me away from being shomer Shabbat. My more practical side might suggest that Shabbat was downtime for my brain from the everyday details of my life, although I can't imagine what was so pressing at that time in my life.

Several years after I completed university and even earned a Masters in secondary English education, I began working for the National Jewish Outreach Program. In time, my position became a dream job for me - writing about Judaism.  I spend my days immersed in words, researching and writing, and I remain the voracious reader that I always have been.  

While I no longer feel that overwhelming compulsion to write on Shabbat, I often feel it at other, shall we say, inappropriate times - like when I am suppossed to be spending time with my kids or cleaning the house.
And sometimes words, phrases, sentences...the whole writing process, seems to just perculate with in me.

Why did I start a blog? Because words keep me focused. Because being wrapped in words is the safest place for me because I know that here I can succeed. Because I am driven to write and a personal blog seems a beautiful place to unleash my unfettered voice.