We're getting married! Here's our story (the cliffsnotes version)

How we met:
Andrew and I met online. Yep, that’s right. Online. We met on a website called okcupid. I signed up one Friday night when I was home alone and bored. The next morning I had a message from a guy with a great smile with a subject line that read “Please correct my grammar.” The message itself was endearing. This guy had read my profile and was trying to make a genuine conversation. Not the standard “hey u r cute wanna chat?” And let’s be honest, I’m an English teacher. Those messages always just got deleted. But here was a guy with this amazing smile and he could write full sentences! I read his profile and was impressed for lots of reasons—he liked cats, was working on his second masters degree, liked to dance, and everything he wrote about himself was clever and intelligent. We messaged back and forth, and I immediately appreciated his sense of humor. It didn’t take long for us to decide to meet. Of course, I wanted to take the safe way out. I told him I was planning to go to my favorite coffee shop that afternoon to grade papers, and that if he had work to do he should join me. I noticed him immediately when he walked it. He had tight jeans, and a t-shirt layered underneath a plaid button up. He was cuter than I could have imagined. And he walked up and smiled at me, held his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Andrew.” I knew immediately that this was the man I was going to marry.

How we got engaged:
We were celebrating New Year's Eve together at our apartment. When the clock struck midnight, we kissed and toasted some champagne. The television was playing Sinatra's "New York, New York" and Andrew asked me if I wanted to dance (we were in the process of moving into our new home, and the place was sans furniture). I thought this was romantic and fun, so I said of course. Andrew said "help me up" and I did. But Andrew didn't stand to dance. Instead, he only rose to one knee. It took me a moment to realize that he was proposing. He was holding a little block box open with the most perfect ring I’d ever seen. I was completely speechless, full of tears. When I caught my breath, he said “so will ya?” “You have to ask it right, honey” I told him, laughing. He tried again, this time with “Would you be my wife?”
And now here we are! Planning our wedding and the rest of our lives together.

Challenge!

I am a self-proclaimed workaholic. I teach my assigned classes, I am the faculty sponsor for an honor society, and I volunteer for 100 other things to keep me busy. On top of that, I am planning my wedding (4 months to go!) I'm very happy-- truly. But here's what's missing: my creativity. I haven't written in months. My goal since college, maybe before, has been to write a novel. But by the time I grade my papers, plan my lessons, catch up on emails, and research prices for wedding favors, there's no way I'm looking at my computer voluntarily. All I want to do when the day is done is watch TV.

And when I do sit down to try to write, I realize that my mind is blank. It is blank because I haven't been writing, and I'm out of practice. One of the first things I learned in my creative writing classes was to write every day-- something, anything, just get thoughts on paper.

So this is what I'm challenging myself to do. I'm going to give myself 10 minutes a day to write. And I don't mean emails, assignments, or lesson plans. I mean either blogs or pages of a novel. Wish me luck! And hold me to it!