We all of us have habits, the only question is if the good habits outweigh the bad. As an English as a Second Language teacher, I am sometimes calling out students for their bad habits. It is the usual thing: they will wander into class 30 minutes late coffee in hand, text under the table in their native tongue, or, most dreadful of all, operate under the belief that a sentence and an essay are the same thing. Oh, no, my students, they are not.
I bring this up because our grammar this week is about habits and the verb forms we use to describe them. So in thinking about this I discovered something about myself that I want to share with you. I have fallen out of the habit of writing. I used to call myself a writer, not because I was published or even wrote for public consumption. I called myself a writer because I wrote.My tendency was to write songs, jokes, short stories, scripts of all sorts. I enjoyed playing with words and styles and language as a whole. And then I stopped.
I don't know why but I just stopped writing. I fell out of the habit. Because, writing is a habit. And habits are something that can be developed over time. Really, if you write just a little bit everyday you will find, after time, that you are writing more quickly, more creatively, more easily than before. I know this. So why am I not doing it?
As a teacher, I will have my students write. But, as a teacher, I am a model, and if I don't write, why do I expect them to? So, here it is, my promise to you, my students, that I will write a little bit everyday, my promise to return myself to the habit of writing. I don't promise to post or share everything I write, but know that as your teacher I am not having you do something I am not willing to do myself.
I do plan on habitually sharing on this blog some of my adventures in teaching English. If there is anything you want to know about Grammar, Vocabulary, Idioms, whatever, leave a comment below. Heck, leave a comment just because. I'd love to hear from you all.
Happy Writing.