Let's try something new.

In an effort to force creativity, or at least set aside time for it, I've decided to do a simple little writing exercise.

I'll go to a website that has a random word generator (such as this one) , and use that as inspiration. I'll write continuously for five minutes, and must stop when time is up. It can be fiction, or autobiographical, or whatever the hell ends up coming out of my fingers. It doesn't have to make sense. I don't know if I'll be able to keep this up on a daily basis, but maybe it will be something to do if I ever feel the need to be expressive.

And here we go.

Today's word: Direction.

I always get lost. It doesn't matter how many times I've been to a particular place; I will always get turned around and end up calling my mother in an exasperated tone hoping she'll be near a computer so she can GoogleMaps me out of my confusion. It's funny that I ended up being so bad with directions, considering my father is an outdoors-man who can go out into the woods with nothing but a compass and find his way back to the cabin with no trouble at all. Now that I had inherited the summer cabin, I thought maybe just being in these woods again, where he used to spend so much of his time, would somehow imbue me with some inherent sense of direction, like I could feel his presence guiding me. But here I was, in the middle of a forest clearing with no cell phone reception and no clue where the main trail was. The sun was about to set, and it was starting to get cold.