My Most Important Assignment

I literally just realized that, today, I took a 43 question exam and wrote two two-page papers from scratch, completing three of the assignments that I've been stressing about and trying to find time to work on for the past few days, but I still have one assignment left to do today before I can go to bed: I need to blog.

Blogging has, occasionally, seemed like a burden to me. It takes time. It takes creativity. And, if I added up all the blog posts I've written over the past few years, I can't even imagine the number of pages they would fill. I've written books, or at least one really long, incoherent book. But after all this work I've put into it, and all the work I've yet to put into it, what has this blog gotten me?

It has gotten me closer to God.

That is what makes blogging my most important assignment. My blog posts don't affect my GPA. No one ever grades them. In fact, I could go back and change "affect" to "effect" right now, and no one would ever call me out on it. But even though I'm not graded on the quality of my blog posts, I have a good reason to put some effort into them, because the work I put into my blog posts comes around and effects me.

I don't blog so I can get more A's or so I can practice writing papers. I blog because I made a commitment to blog, and it also happens to help make me a better person. That's the real reward for blogging: progress. My blog posts don't have to be A grade papers. It doesn't matter how good or bad I make them. What matters is how good they make me.

I am a good person, but I'd like to be better. My blog posts help me with that. That's why I've kept blogging, day after day, night after night, for years. That's what's kept me up until midnight most nights lately. It's not just that I have a four-page essay due on Monday. It's that I have a far more important essay due at the end of every day.