Without Excuse

Contrary to the running name of this blog, I don’t plan on just writing on Tuesdays and Thursdays (obviously because today is a Wednesday).Writing is a daily activity for me on multiple levels. I would never hesitate to post something just because it was a Monday or a Friday.

The real reason I decided to call my blog Tuesday/Thursday Pen has far more to do with the current cultural way of thinking…or should I say the lack of it. As a society, we have determined that it is often perfectly fine to allow our thinking to be dictated by the current culture or even to allow ourselves to be completely mindless.

On Friday, we have collectively decided that it's perfectly fine to leave our brains at work, between the pages of our textbooks, or on our laptops or iPads (among other places), and venture boldly into society without them. As a result, on Saturday, they often don’t function at full capacity. Sunday is a little harder to pin down, but people still usually think of this day as a part of their weekend and subject their brain to whatever continuing mindset benefits their weekend plans.

Everyone knows the jokes about Monday. As a society, we use Monday as an excuse to be only partly functional, mistake-ridden, and sloppy. I myself fall prey to the phrase, “It’s a Monday,” as if the day of the week in itself excuses my lethargic brain.

Wednesday is affectionately dubbed “hump day,” meaning that it is the middle of the week. People tend to be worn out, tired, and ready for another mindless weekend on Wednesdays.

That just leaves Tuesdays and Thursdays. Admittedly, these days are the only two where we have no excuse not to be functioning in full throttle. “It’s a weekend,” “It’s a Monday,” and “It’s hump day” don’t fly on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Of course, we can create any other excuse we want, but that excuse will usually place the blame in our lap or in somebody else’s; it’s not going to be an “it’s-nobody’s-fault” excuse.

Now, I realize that I am overgeneralizing. I am sure that there are plenty of people who work on the weekends. When I was in the working world, I did. Now that I am in school, I use my weekends mainly for homework, like many of you. Several people probably also wake up bright and chipper on Monday mornings, never excuse their mindset to the type of day, and don’t feel exhausted and ready for a break by Wednesday. That would not be me.

My point is that, as a culture, we have unconsciously decided that we don’t have a liable excuse not to be fully functioning on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as opposed to all the rest of the days where we have an excuse that we expect people to understand and accept. This fact also means that our minds could be anywhere, thinking about a myriad of topics, making detailed plans, or contemplating poetry. An openness of topic is beneficial to me. When I decided to do a blog, I wondered what my main themes would be – I wanted to write about many different themes. Finally, I decided that I needed to call my blog something broad, something that would allow me to write about whatever I wanted in whichever style suited me at the time. The fact that someone’s mindset on a Tuesday or a Thursday isn’t dictated by any one particular subject fit my purpose.   

Obviously, I will be writing on other days, not just Tuesdays and Thursdays. My real point is that I don’t have an excuse for not functioning at full capacity every day of the week, nor do I have an excuse not to be thinking about everything critically, logically, and biblically at all times. I should always have a Tuesday/Thursday mindset that doesn’t allow any excuse to worm its way into my thinking. I never have a reason to be mindless or leave my brain anywhere at any time. This mindset is what I wanted to capture when I named my blog. I guess I could’ve also called it “Without Excuse.”

The Voices I Borrow to Write: the Top 5 Reasons I Write

5. Epictetus said, “If you want to be a writer, write.”  Rather ironic, coming from the guy who may not have actually ever written anything down because all we have are transcriptions from his pupil, Arrian, but that’s beside the point. While I realize that being in college assumes writing, I also realize that writing doesn’t only emphasize the importance of what we would term “academic writing.” Up until the last couple hundred years, the academic curriculum included poetry readings, plays, and the arts. Isn’t it amazing that they considered these types of activities “academic” while today we snobbishly dub them “fine arts”? As if they could only be enjoyed and understood in black-tie apparel at night on the weekends from a plushy seat (at the very back of the theater because, if you’re like me, you can’t afford the front and center seats). Of course, I write academically. In fact, not a week passes that doesn’t see me revising some paper at 10 o’clock at night at least one day a week. But what would my ideas look like in a poem? How would I deal with a moral conflict in a short story? Do I have the stamina to carry a character all the way through the hero’s journey in a novel? If I want to be a writer, I need to wrestle with these forms of writing, too.

4. In his unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald makes his antagonist, Monroe Stahr, say, “Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.” If I didn’t write, I would go crazy. There are so many ideas and viewpoints in the world and so many lives that I want to live and places that I want to go. I don’t want to be a “static character,” a “flat character,” or even a character; I want to climb inside multiple heads and get multiple perspectives. But overall, I want these perspectives to coagulate in me and make me one unique person. You know, the world is so exciting, especially for a person born with the curse of a huge imagination!

3. In a recent issue of Poets and Writers, Michigan-born poet Bob Hicok said, “The really cool thing, cool and joyously contradictory… [is], I disappear when I write.” Writing makes me not only a more intuitive version of myself, it erases me. Being a writer must be so humbling. You know, most people remember titles of books, names of characters, and details of plots. What they usually don’t remember is the major life conflicts an author experienced or when an author was born. Sometimes they can’t even tell you who the author of a particular book is! (If you are a fanatic of some author, I applaud you. In this case, you are “the Other.”) In some way, I want to be erased, but I also want the things I write and the characters that I create to live on.

2.  Perceptive Sonia Sanchez, an award-winning poet closely connected with the Black Arts movement said, “One of the most important questions that I’ve tried to answer is a question that you younger poets and writers must [also] answer, which is, what does it mean to be human.” There are so many people out there defining what it means to be me or you in a myriad of ways. Sometimes I feel overlabeled, underdefined, reconfused, and unanswered. (Yes, three of those words really aren’t in the dictionary.) As a Christian and as a writer, I feel like I am called to challenge people who want to say what it means for me – or for anyone – to be human. They won’t always have the right answer. Sometimes they won’t even have a logical answer! I’m not saying that I’ll always be able to articulate the correct answer, but, as a Christian, I do know where to get it, and I should be sharing it with others.

1. In the Bible, God says, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10; Colossians 3:23) You know, it scares me to show people what I write. I shake when I speak in front of people. I don’t always have the most articulated, beautiful (or even correct) concepts. But I love writing! It’s that risk, that permanence, that snapshot of a person’s mindset that makes it so attractive to me. God has given me a love of writing to cultivate, grow, and use. I will not be that servant who buried his lord’s gift in the dirt of fear (Luke 19:21). Perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).