The odd thing about using my free time to write essays is that I always hated writing assignments. I remember being awake at 3AM during my junior year of high school, trying to finish an anthology project. I finally wrote a silly poem about the ticking clock, writer's block, and agony; I was never happier to finish my homework. This continued in college, when I signed up for courses in short fiction and freelance writing. I liked both classes, but these were cases of making the most of my electives; I don't remember enjoying the writing.
There is a similar opening act to my running story - young me, he never liked running. If a coach needed a punishment, extra running was 100% effective; I basically quit helmet football because of the vindictive, pointless sprints. But I know when the tide turned with running. I returned to Japan during the summer after my sophomore year and ran without a clear objective for the first time in my life. I simply ran, guided by a vague notion to get in better shape while exploring the foreign cities, towns, and countrysides of home. Running finally made sense. When I returned to basketball practice that fall, I found myself entirely unaffected by the once-dreaded conditioning tests, or by punishment sprints; it was just running, and since I knew how to do it, I liked it.
I guess it's no surprise that a similar thing has become true of writing. At some point in the past few years, I found myself writing without prompting, and it finally made sense. There were some vague notions of killing time between jobs, organizing my thinking, or becoming famous enough to be canceled, but for the most part I was just writing. I agree with the many who have noted that unstructured, unorganized time is critical to developing creative skills; I'd like to know what the experts anticipate when the only exposure to an activity is via structured, organized time.
