Living in a world of words

Much of my life lately has been spent writing.  Now, normally I would enjoy such a task.  Writing, after all, is the medium in which I best express myself.  However, my style of writing is... well, it's this.  What you've been reading on my blog, for however long you have followed.  It's not just a string of bland statements, but it's a conversation between us.  This is my element, where I am most comfortable.  I love to communicate things in a way that makes sense to me, and hopefully to you as well.

The writing that I find myself doing now is Academic Writing.  Not just any kind of Academic Writing, but the sciencey stuff.  That means cold impersonal sentences stuffed full of incomprehensible jargon.  There's no life in it.  It's painful to me, to have to put my words into such a form that I disdain.  Alas, the culture of academia gives me no recourse, and I must struggle on, editing and re-editing, to find the exact precise form that will make my paper as publishable as possible.

If only I could be a science journalist.  Now THAT would be much more fun.  Perhaps after I'm done with this manuscript and it gets published somewhere, I'll write you all a fun and interesting summary in real-people language.

In the meantime, I've been getting out to enjoy the weather as well.  Recently my brother came to visit from Ottawa, and there was much fun to be had as you can see from the above picture of playing in the cherry blossoms.  What this picture doesn't show is the crazy hailstorm that happened 10 minutes prior which completely soaked us all from the knees down. Never a dull moment in Vancouver!