English 101

I am a week and 2 days from my 38th birthday.  I started to say I was 37, but that already seems like it's passed.  My whole life I've said I want (or wanted) to be a writer. I used to read like a sponge sucks up water, but lately... I don't.  I have many excuses -- I don't have time, There aren't any books that interest me, There are better things to do with my time, and so on.  But they all fall flat, like a made-up reason.

My oldest son is starting college, and of course has enrolled in English 101 (or English 1101 as they number it now, 20 years after I went to college). I found myself reading his first assignment, an excerpt from How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen.  Reading it sparked that desire to write in a way that I haven't felt in a long while.  And the last lines seemed to echo in my mind and my heart:

"There are only two ways, really, to become a writer.  One is to write.  The other is to read."

But I have stopped doing both...