2024 Personal Essay Writing Challenge: Day 3

Since it’s the first time, I did not know how this personal essay writing challenge was going to go, but it’s been so much fun! We’re not even half-way through the week, but I’ve had a lot of fun writing and reading essays already.

For today’s prompt, write a conflict essay. For me, this means a personal essay that looks at two or more conflicting forces. An example might be finding a good work-life balance and how many people need to work to make a living, but they also may feel that too much work detracts from actually living and/or feeling human. Another example might be the struggle of caring for others against caring for yourself, or considering personal freedoms against group safety.

Just keep in mind that these are personal essays, not investigative reporting. So try to think about personal conflicts that you or people you know have to face in your/their day-to-day lives.

Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.

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Completely separate of this fun and free personal essay challenge, be sure to check out the annual Writer’s Digest Personal Essay Awards. The top prize is $2,500 cash, publication in Writer’s Digest, and more.

Click here to learn more.

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Here’s my attempt at a Conflict personal essay:

“Speed Humps,” by Robert Lee Brewer

Lately, there’s been a bit of a virtual fracas taking place in and among our usually peaceful neighborhood, and the source of the commotion has been the simple idea of possibly installing speed humps. Some people are strongly for them, others are adamantly against them, and the rest of us are stuck somewhere in the middle.

There’s no doubt that our neighborhood has a recurring speeding problem. Not everyone, for sure, but enough people, whether they’re residents or people cutting through our neighborhood as a shortcut, speed through that parents especially worry for their children walking along the side of the road or riding bikes. More than once, I’ve been passed by an impatient driver while I only drove the speed limit. Dog walkers have made comments on our neighborhood Facebook page.

So finally someone reached out to the county to go through the process of evaluating the prospect of installing speed humps. The county officials brought out speed strips on the two main roads running through our neighborhood, collected data for both, and determined that one of the roads qualified for speed humps, if a supermajority of residents along that road were to vote yes on having them installed. Simple enough, right?

Simple is always so complicated.

The prospect of a vote that only involved people who lived along the road infuriated people who did not. Of course, the only people who would pay taxes on the speed humps would be those who lived along the road, but still, some people argued, everyone’s home values would be impacted by these speed humps, as if that were a top deciding factor in any person’s home buying decision. My wife made an astute observation that we didn’t get to vote on various developments in other cities in which we don’t pay taxes, so this would be the same as that. The people with the potential of being taxed get to vote.

On the other hand, someone who lived along the road complained about how only the people along the road would be paying taxes. This person believed everyone in the neighborhood should have to pay and claimed the price was not an issue, but that it was the principle of the matter. In fact, this person claimed they would take the issue to “the media,” because they were so disgusted (and I’m sure “the media” just can’t wait for a juicy speed hump story).

Mind you, we had not even had a vote yet on the issue of approving the speed humps. Since the supermajority required is so high, the likelihood of the speed humps getting approved is far from assured. In fact, the issue had been raised years before and failed. It’ll probably fail again.

But I feel that whether the issue passes or fails this time around that we’ve learned something about the temperament of a few people within the neighborhood who immediately jumped to conspiracy theories, name-calling, and threats before even holding a vote. If we can’t even have a rational and polite debate about speed humps, how can we hope to have the really difficult conversations?

(Note: Speaking of civility, I realize that it’s possible that some of the conflict topics might have the potential for stirring debate in the comments. Please refrain from getting uncivil in the comments today. I’d hate to remove comments or commenters from the site because of tempers flaring. If you want to get into mean arguments, there are social media platforms for that kind of thing.)