A Week Without Words

I've been neglecting my blog because I've had nothing to say. However, I have something to write about now. And if people actually read this, they might be interested for once. So here's the thing: I've decided to take a week long vow of silence. Why? Because it's for an English project. You see, we're supposed to do at least one thing to simplify our lives. Today in class, we went around the room and said what we planned on doing starting midnight tonight, or Saturday morning. It was fitting, in my opinion, that I was one of the very last people to share.

Going around the room, there was a lot of, "I'm going to stay off of the Internet, unless I need it for a school assignment," and "I'm giving up Facebook," and "I'm going to do [any activity] for an hour a day." We went around the room. I was originally planning to say, "I'm giving up Facebook for the week," but it became one of the more mainstream things to do. I didn't want to be mainstream. I wanted to be more extreme than that. It finally hit me when someone listed a few things they planned on doing to simplify their life. One of which was, "I'm going to stop talking for an hour each day, just to pay more attention to other people and the things around me."

Well, the first thing I thought was, An hour a day? I could do better... And viola! The vow of silence came to me. That was going to be good.

So person after person, I started to get excited. Finally my teacher turned to me. "Alex?"

I took a breath in. "I think I'm going to do a week-long vow of silence."

Suddenly, everyone turned to their neighbors and started talking. People were impressed. Could I last a week without talking? They thought it was interesting that I would choose to try.

After discussing my rough idea with my English teacher, we decided that I'd talk when it was absolutely necessary for me to do so. When a teacher calls on me over the next week, I must answer, rather than holding up my note card that reads, "I have taken a vow of silence." Good thing, too, because it turns out I'm going to the dentist next week as well. I'm not going to ignore my dentist. Or my piano teacher. Or any other teacher, for that matter. Common conversation, on the other hand, will be eliminated.

I plan to make a few videos with my note cards, so this will not be the last you'll hear of me for the week. Hopefully, I can last the entire 7 days of silence. I'm a little worried that I'll cave, but I'm really hoping I won't.

I'll be sure to summarize the week in a later post.

So long, my dear voice.