¡Lo siento, amigas!

I wanted to post today about gender in pronouns (and elsewhere) in Español, but wow — I don’t know exactly how many days have passed since I last posted here!  (I’m afraid to look just yet.)  I started this blog with the intention of posting at least once per week, with an occasional guest post and/or link to an external article, podcast episode, or YouTube/Vimeo video pertaining to the study of Spanish.  Lately, I’ve really missed the mark!

My other objective was to keep myself hitting the proverbial “books” (in actuality, mostly the websites I use for self-study).  I’m afraid that I’ve fallen woefully behind in that respect, as well.  ¡Caramba!

Motivation

Trust me when I tell you that I am every bit as motivated to continue with my studies, and with my blogging, as when I started this endeavor back in Noviembre de 2015.  The trouble is not a lack of motivation; it’s a deluge of noise, of inputs, of interruptions.   Read More

Yo Soy Escritor

Fakin’ it ’til I make it?  Perhaps.  But I have been writing since I was a very young adult.  Informal writing, to be sure.  Love letters to sweethearts (or potential sweethearts), poems for close friends and family celebrating special events, and pleadings for prayer and guidance from even closer friends and counselors during hard times in my life — I have been putting pen to paper (or, after a certain point in time, Helvetica to screen) for more than 30 of my 50 years on this orb.

Now, none of that makes me a writer, necessarily, I will readily admit.  However, several years back, when I stopped trying to write like a college freshman attempting to fill space in an essay in a style that would make even a college professor puke, I began receiving unsolicited and unexpected compliments.  That is to say, I really didn’t even want to hear compliments — only answers to the questions or problems I was presenting — but I would be told, instead, how clearly I expressed the issues I was contemplating in my messages.

At that point, however, it never occurred to me to write as a vocation.  Read More