So There Was This One Time I Created a Blog

    So there was this one time when I created a blog. I imagined it as a near supernatural incentive to begin writing again at length, the way I used to around the end of high school through my first year of college (or 2/3 year of college as it turned out.) I even went and wrote a long manifesto of how I would write regularly, and every word would be dripping with pure, distilled genius. You can read that post here: http://sketchesbyhoz.blogspot.com/
     Needless to say, all that writing has not yet come into being. The blog I created sits unattended in a cluttered corner of internet things I never use like my Hotmail account, Myspace and Xanga. Every now and then, I'll get an idea of a topic that would produce an amazing short piece of writing, but by the time I reach my computer, the whole thought is muddled and mangled by so many other things that my attempts to put it into words result in shit that I'm embarrassed to even acknowledge. Yes, I am embarrassed right now at having acknowledged said shit.
     All of this leads me to wonder why I don't just write something for the sake of writing more often. It doesn't have to be some kind of brilliant masterpiece. I just want to have some words out there for people to read sometimes. In fact, someone I care about recently said just that to me: I need to just write. After all my earlier promises of material, every day I go without writing something, the more I will feel pressure to produce something amazing. In the spirit of that thought, I decided to examine a week of my life with absolutely zero writing involved to find out what exactly I'm doing otherwise. This isn't an excuse as much as it is an exploration. I will be remembering the events of this past week from last Tuesday to today as I write. The good news is that last week was, for the most part, extremely boring, so you have lots of exaggeration to look forward to. The bad news is that last week was extremely boring, so this post might turn out to be extremely boring. So, without any further delay, I give you a week in the life of Hozer where he didn't write anything.
      When I woke up the power was out. It had been out when I had returned home the night before, and it was still out. The house was starting to get muggy and there was no internet so I went to work. I roasted in the heat all day, working ropes courses and came back home. When I returned, the power had come back on, and the air conditioning was starting to cool the place down a bit. It felt like the sensation you get after a day of physical labor and you first lay down. I quickly fell asleep, and woke up an hour after camp dinner had been served. Having nothing to eat in my pantry and fridge, I hopped in my car (which also didn't have air conditioning because it had gone out the day before,) and drove to Clarksville to pick up a cheese burger. When I got home, I turned on Netflix so I could watch a show while I ate. That one show turned into a short marathon (I think it was an X Men cartoon.) At around 11:30, I decided to go to bed so I watched one more episode and hit the sack.
     At this point, it's safe to assume that every week day, I worked until 5:00. Also, I went to camp dinner every night from Wednesday to Friday so my descriptions of the days will, from this point on, begin at about 6 PM.
     After work on Wednesday, I spent some time studying for the GRE. After a few hours, I went out to the porch of my house to take a phone call. While out there, I heard voices from down by the farmhouse. For those of you who don't know the layout of Camp Joy's residences, the farm house is the next house south from where I live. As I looked to see if I could tell who was there, I spotted Max, my friend Travis's little dog. As soon as he noticed me, he stopped and stared for a second. He barked once, suspecting me to be a stranger approaching, and upon realizing who I was, he ran forward and attempted to wrestle for a brief moment. He quickly decided against wrestling and found a stick to devour, so I went and said hi to Matt and Travis who were standing by the house. We had a fun night of hanging out, drinking a few beers and playing video games until Travis's sugar crashed. I grabbed him some food, and also my guitar, and sat around while he recovered from his sickly state, picking around. Travis left once he felt better, and Matt and I entartained ourselves with some video games until bed time.
     On Thursday, a new toy came into my life. I got my hands on a brand spankin' new Xbox. I had 3 games to test out, so I did my best to get a half hour of play in on them before leaving for Monroe. In Monroe, I saw my closest friends in the first time in nearly a month, and enjoyed some good deep conversation over scripture and a few beers. This, of course, came after some good stupid conversation about a bevvy of things I can't even remember except that I enjoyed them thoroughly. On my way home, I stopped off at Wal Mart in Lebanon to grab a rechargable battery for my Xbox controller and some toilet paper, waited way too long  in line for the register, and returned home at about 11:30. Of course, I couldn't bear to leave my Xbox sit for another day before playing it again, so I played some Fallout until finally turning in at 1, accepting that Friday would be a sleepy day.
     And it was. I decided to drive to the ropes course instead of walking from the parking lot to the pool house as usual. On the way, I was stopped by Nicole, our intervention specialist who, in a very serious tone, said "Harry Potter tonight. Don't go running off without us." She pointed at me with an accusatory finger as I drove off. I wonder if anything in my character would have suggested to her that I would jump the gun, and leave to go see a movie on my own, leaving a large group of friends behind. When I got home after work, I realized that I had no idea when we were supposed to meet, but assumed they would swing down to get me. They all know where I live, after all. At about 6, I turned down an offer for dinner from my sister who was speaking for my father. It's all just as well. I had eaten earlier. Finally, at around 9:00, I resigned myself to the knowledge that I had missed the bus for the movie. Eric from camp had come down to visit in his boredom, so we played some Xbox games, I had a talk with an old friend from college, and I went to bed.
     Saturday I woke up and decided to get some cleaning done. I tidied up some of the stuff in my room, and threw together a load of clothes to be washed. Once the clothes were safely in the washer, I turned on the video games to pass the time until I needed to move them to the dryer. An hour later, I went to check on them, and they were already in the dryer. My housemate Bobbi had to do some laundry, so she had moved them. I went back to my game, and another hour or so later, Bobbi came up the stairs from the basement and told me that the clothes were on the table. Deciding that I had played way too many video games, I grabbed the pile of clothes, threw on a fresh outfit and hopped in my car to visit my Dad. At home, we talked about various things involving the next steps my life is taking, and once these conversations were done, were both entirely absorbed into a tv show called Swamp People. My brother came down from Columbus to visit as well, and got caught in the same television trap as me and my Dad, and about an hour later we decided we should get some food. Another half hour of indecision later, we hopped in the car with no destination in mind, and started driving to town. Finally we stopped at a bar where my sister joined us. We talked, ate and had a pretty good time, and afterwards, I joined both my brother and sister and my brother's girfriend's family in watching Harry Potter using tickes my Dad decided to buy for us. After the movie, we went back home, and I decided to drive back to camp to go to sleep.
     I turned off my alarm in my sleep Sunday morning, and I had only set one instead of my usual 3. At 9, I woke up, looked at my clock and realized how late it was. My best friend was preaching his first ever service as a church pastor, and the service was beginning at that very moment. I hopped out of bed, threw on the same outfit I had worn the day before and made it to Xenia in record time, arriving just in time to catch the end of Drock's personal introduction to the church, and the beginning of his sermon. Afterwards, I went out with Drock and his family to eat at a little tavern in Yellow Springs where Rock's brother cooks. On the way out of town, we looked across the road from the tavern and spotted Dave Chapelle sitting around and talking with some locals. It was pretty cool, but we didn't make too much of a fuss about it. When we got back to Rock's parents house, we hung out for about another half hour, and I went home. I played some more Xbox, studied a little more for the GRE, and went to bed.
     Monday night's dinner was fantastic. We had Skyline chili brought in by Cincinnati Children's Hospital for their kids who are here for camp this week. I enjoyed the biggest 3 way I have ever eaten while taking in the entertainment of watching 2 coworkers who had never eaten Skyline in their lives. After that, I fell headfirst into another lazy night, and went to bed.
     That brings us up to speed for the week. In retrospect, I wasted a ton of time last week. Any of that time when I was watching TV or playing video games, I could have easily written something down. As  for my goal for this week: I want to write something new every day. It's probably going to be simple, stupid and short, but at least it will work me toward getting into the grove of writing some stuff again. Hopefully, with the changes next year are sure to bring, I will be able to bring back a passion for words that seems to have faded from my mind.