Writing Excersise

I started following this gal on twitter today named Michelle Richmond (@writingexercise) and she puts out a daily writing exercise (well, allegedly she is a gal...this is after all, the internet...but I digress) . I'm usually not game for such things as I really just write stuff down whenever the hell I want to write. And when I do, I write about whatever the hell I want to write about. I always have a topic in mind when I bring up the blog page to write stuff in it, or I wouldn't have brought up the blog page at all.

Even so, I don't mind intellectual exercises. Even if I don't intend to write about these little writing prompts, it is fun to think of what I would write about, if I would have decided to.

I looked through the history of her "tweets" and it has some neat topics. This probably doesn't make any sense at all, but the study in what I might have written is as entertaining to me as the stuff I have written. Many times, moreso. (Don't worry, even I am confused by this paragraph)

Anyway, I ran through the list and came across today's entry:

"Spent an afternoon in the garden, filled my compost bin and five paper grocery bags with yard waste. Write about a catharsis."

This peaked my interest because (I'm ashamed to say) I had no idea what the word catharsis meant. To my knowledge, I have never before encountered this word in my life. It isn't often I have to go to dictionary.com, but I scurried there as fast as my typing-challenged fingers could get me there.

ca⋅thar⋅sis 
-noun, plural -ses
1. the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, esp. through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.
2. Medicine/Medical. purgation.
3. Psychiatry.
a. psychotherapy that encourages or permits the discharge of pent-up, socially unacceptable affects.
b. discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.

Once I read it, it certainly reminded me of cathartic, which apparently, is the adjective form of the word. Indeed "cathartic" is how I would describe my blogging. Interestingly, another form of the word is cathartical, which is an adjective describing the evacuation of the bowels. Ironically, judging from the content I put out, this could also be an apt description of blogging for me.

Either way, catharsis as a writing prompt is particularly fun because, that is what this blog is all about. Writing things down so I don't get particularly stressed about anything.

Those who know me, know that I rarely get stressed. I think most of the reason is that I write. I write crazy stuff that literally fills up my documents folder on my work computer (and now google docs, two blogs and counting, and various guild and gaming forums, heh). I write about WoW. I write about life. I write about the weather. I dunno, I just...write stuff. If I didn't write, I'd probably explode with stress.

Note that I didn't say that all the stuff I write is any GOOD (obviously...I mean look at this post for crying out loud). Mostly it is just typing the first thing that pops into my head and then going back and editing it 47 times because it didn't look right. Even though nobody will ever read it. Why do I edit things that nobody will ever read? Doesn't make sense really.

I blame the economy.