I was sitting on a bench outside.  I could hear the muted buzz of the boiler room and echos of chatting students.  But I paid no attention to that, because I was writing.  My pencil scrawled across the paper, I could feel my hand heat up and cramp.  ‘Personal narrative’ was the main idea.  That meant ‘recalling memories’ or ‘characterization.’ The format was so rigid, it was practically a fill-in-the blank.  Bits and pieces of ideas and phrases were written down as soon as they were thought of.   This junk hardly counted as my best work, but at that point, content wasn’t the highest priority, I just had to have a full page.
I looked at the student to my left, his notebook was filled with neat, legible words. I turned to the person at my right. He too, almost had a full page. I sighed and buried my face in my hands. I attempted to think of something to occupy the paper.  When I couldn’t think of anything, I considered the cause of my own writer's block.
At what point in my life did school become a chore? I used to enjoy writing, because I could be creative.  I liked writing to be different and unexpected.  But as I became older, I realized that teachers liked to see ‘traditional’ pieces of writing and themes or statements that were easily understandable, like a baby being spoonfed food.  Writing was relative.  Fulfilling the shallow expectations of viewers or interpreting trivial things as important made it automatically meaningful.
And so writing became throwing around random stories and claims to see what stuck. Then I would revise the draft to be more pompous, add complexity and prayed the teacher would give me a passing grade.  This was how I wrote for a year, and it was incredibly boring.
I wanted to enjoy writing again.  I needed to change.  I needed something new to write about.  Something crazy and mind bending.  I didn’t care if others rejected it, because it would be unique to me.
It was hard to describe my thinking process, but I wanted to express how I felt about writing.  Break literary conventions in a curt commentary, of sorts.  As something that every student did, my message could relate well with them.  I scrambled to dump the contents of my mind onto my notebook.  I had a white-knuckle grip on my pencil.  I no longer felt tired or bored, I was excited. Because for the first time in awhile, I felt enthusiastic about writing. Because I had an idea, my own idea, something that was unique to me.
“Note to self,” I muttered.  “I may have to add more dialogue.”
Half an hour past, I had written three whole pages.  I should have been exhausted.  But as I put away my pencil and closed my notebook, I felt enlightened.  For the first time in awhile, I felt proud of my work, because it challenged people's thinking.  Making people think is what I desire my legacy to be.  But perhaps I’m making that up because it fits well with my narrative’s theme.