Remember in elementary school when the teacher would time your writing or your tests? He or she would stand in the front of the room, watching the clock for that perfect moment to let us start. Meanwhile, you and everyone else in the classroom stared at that clock, pencil poised and ready to roll when the teacher said, “Begin!”

(I hated that sort of thing.)

Maybe that’s why I didn’t like school. Too many times being told when to start, where the beginning had to be. That there had to be a beginning, middle and end to everything. What if I wanted to write the ending first? Why couldn’t the end be my beginning? 

I love to read, but sometimes I find the beginnings of books to be too slow. I’m always tempted to skip ahead to something better. But the beginning is important too. Some times the author puts a detail there that we think might not be important or significant to the overall plot of the story, only to find out halfway through the book that yes, we should have read the beginning.

The best beginnings are things we’ve been looking forward to. Especially vacation. Is there nothing more satisfying than the first day of a vacation? The anticipation beforehand, and the excitement when it finally arrives. Books or movies that are released that we’ve counted down the days to. Visiting friends that we’ve made plans with. The beginnings of those are always better than the ends, when we realize it’s over and there’s nothing left.

(Sometimes, I’ll go back to the beginning to try and hold on to that feeling of what it was like before… but you can never get that feeling back… that feeling of not really knowing what lay ahead at the beginning.)