Let's stoke this fire!

Let's stoke this fire!  What was it that I posted last semester, about three blogs?  And she calls herself a blogger.

I watched myself wither as a writer last semester.  By some fluke, none of my classes for fall semester 2016 required writing.  Honestly, ask me how many papers I wrote:  Zippo, nadita, not a single one.  And while my memorize/regurgitate skills got honed, it was as if my writing brain slowly withered away.  The question loomed, would it ever return?  The answer to that is still unknown.  This will be a semester of writing, to be sure.  I have made a few stabs at it so far, but writing now feels rather unfamiliar.  Flexing old muscles that haven't been used in a long time, awkward and somewhat painful.

One thing that went away in my life was the joy of waking up in the wee hours of the morning with a nearly fully formed idea for a blog, jumping out of bed in a groggy, pre-awake stage, and groping for the laptop.  Oh those were heady days.  Now, it's like I can't even remember how to pull up a new word doc.  If you don't use it, you lose it.

Enough whine!  If you want strong muscles, you flex them.  So here's a trifle that I submitted for a class last night.  It was done in about two minutes and was the tail end of all the homework I had to do yesterday, so reportedly not my best work.  But for the sake of beginning again, here is my latest submission for English 201 Non Fiction Writing.

Anecdotal

I was most interested to read, “How Junk Food Can End Obesity”, by David H. Freedman.  I have spent many years fine tuning my diet and lifestyle to seek a healthier way of living.  Junk food went out the window long ago.  The article mentioned the high cost of good food which is very true.  But I decided long ago that I would spend my money on healthy food.  This is a priority for me.  Of course, this decision was challenged greatly when I became a student two years ago and my income was reduced to about a quarter of what I was making before.  Now, I can’t always buy organic or local.  But I do so when I can and with the full knowledge that I will do so again after graduation.  Why pay more for good food and alternative health care?  Because I’m worth it.  Perhaps I’ve come to this conclusion as I have gotten older and my body has started to fall apart.  For example, I can no longer pull all-nighters, no matter how much I need to study.  And I can no longer eat junk food of any kind.  It simply makes me feel ill. 

The article makes fun of stores such as Whole Foods.  They are expensive and have a lot of silly things that are supposedly healthy.  But the truth is there are some things that I eat that I can only find at stores like these.  I’m happy that Fred Meyers now has larger and better stocked health food sections which is where I shop almost exclusively.  The article also makes several convincing points that processed foods are not bad for us.  I don’t care.  I know how I feel when I eat them.  It may be an anecdotal story, but it’s my anecdotal story.