Epiblogue: The Artist and the Writer...

I don't think that I could express in words how much I have enjoyed writing this blog. There have been very few things that would be defined as "work" that I have actually enjoyed doing lately. I forgot how much I loved writing when I was in High School. The last time that I thoroughly enjoyed writing something was probably my senior English paper on the scientific fact existing and lacking in Peter Benchley's Jaws. Since that time I had been enrolled in college courses that was either business writing, which is extremely dry; or writing on topics that didn't interest me in the least bit. When you write for an assignment, your personal style often has to take a back seat to grammar, fact and detail. It's very difficult to express who you are and your own personality in a paper on William Shakespeare's Midsummer's Nights Dream, unless of course you happen to be a mythical horned woodland creature.

Writing this blog has been a reminder to me how expressive of self that carefully constructed written thoughts can be. It can give a real sense of how one truly feels about a particular issue as well as relay what exactly they find interesting and humorous. In order to make this assignment work for myself, I needed to put myself in it. I couldn't simply just state the facts and report on the black and white. Life isn't black and white, and if anyone has ever seen the movie Pleasantville you will remember how boring life was in that little town until some "color" begins to be introduced. Once color is added to something, it seems as a life is brought into it. Everybody has a favorite color, and while you may not be fond of green there is no use arguing that green isn't red. Green is green.

Writing with color is a lot like painting with color. Artists use their own personal styles that are all unique. I may not like Picasso and may love Monet, but that crazy artist's paintings are going to hang in museums around the world regardless of my feelings about his style. Writing with color isn't writing with verbose language that fills pages, but more using the page as a type of canvas to really reflect what you are tyring to say. When the artist finishes a painting the way he wants, he doesn't continue adding to it. The work is done. Color and style are what makes it beautiful, not its size or the number of objects portrayed in it.

While I am thankful to the many who have complimented me, or commented about the blog, I probably would have been equally as happy with my work if no one had read it or said anything about it. I did it for myself. I enjoyed writing it and I looked forward to the next time I would post. If others enjoyed it as well, then that was a bonus in my mind. I wanted to make sure that people had a way to know what was happening down in Brazil, because there was so much going on. I had no idea how it was going to go, if I would stay diligent in doing it or if I would truly regret my decision to begin it in the first place. At the time I started writing this, I wasn't planning on making a second trip later in the summer. I had hoped that Mark or Lori would pick up where I left off with the writing. The "canvas" had other plans and from the moment I wrote the very first line of my very first post I was cranking away at the keyboard with a smile on my face.

I would like to again thank everyone who has been supportive of this effort. It was a lot of work, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have set up a second blog address alexrlawson.blogspot.com, and hope to begin writing shortly. I won't post anywhere near as much as with this one, but I figured that if I would enjoy writing about something, then I should write about it. Who knows, maybe there will be a natalbrazil2008.blogspot.com sometime in the future. Until that point, the final brush stroke on this not so masterful work of art has been made. It has been real. Real fun, real exciting and real eye opening. Thanks again to everyone...