Maybe I was dreaming of my prompt this morning but when I dreamed this morning it was of the poles changing direction. I dreamed of the end of the world. The water in my house didn’t work, the sewers were running backwards as was a natural spring in my house that reversed and became muddy and the electricity went out. Several times I think I woke a little (because Alex was coughing) but I drifted back each time into the dream, knowing I was dreaming but unable to stop it. I don’t remember if I was awake to imagine the end of the world but I stood with my children and told them I loved them as the world imploded…
And so then I was thinking I should tell Alex’s dad that he’s still sick but I may send him to school on Monday regardless since he doesn’t seem contagious, which led me to think of the word “irregardless” which shouldn’t be a word. Should it? Spell check likes it. But it makes no sense. To “irregard,” one would think, would be a negative meaning “not to regard” and so putting a “less” on the end turns “irregardless” into a double negative meaning to regard. So sending Alex to school regarding his cough would be senseless… (Yes, Doobster, I looked up the Webster’s definition of “irregardless” but the looking up of it was ruining the flow of my writing which is why I didn’t copy and paste it.)
And so this is an account, really, of my morning so far. Not really stream of consciousness thought (though it was at the time) but I have written this unedited and as it came back to me, which is kind of a double negative in and of itself.
The good news is, if you have made it to the end of this post, at least the world hasn’t ended yet. Hooray!
I used to hate people who told me, with their nose seemingly turned up in disdain, that they didn’t watch TV. That was back when I used to do barely anything else when I got home from work at night. Knit and watch TV. Every single night.
Fast forward to now: I never watch TV. I don’t turn my nose up at people who do – I understand that their leisure time is as valuable to them as mine is to me – they just choose to do something different with it. But I do have to say that I’m really feeling the effects of NOT watching it. Why?
Pop-culture can be very important in any work of art. It has the ability to connect the artist to his audience in a unique way, like, remember where you were when the last episode of M*A*S*H was aired? Or when we heard those famous words, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”? Can you? I can. But do I know a damned thing about what’s going on on “The Office”? No.
In the spirit of my prompt for these first ten days of January here on Just Jot It January, I decided to allow my mind wander along the thread of inspiration endowed upon me by this post by Opinionated Man on HarsH ReaLiTy.
My question for the day: when is it okay to say anything?
I once worked for a woman who owned a wool shop. It was an interesting job in that I was in a position to help people with their knitting and crocheting projects; this included aiding them in getting the right yarn for their pattern. While I worked hard to make sure they would meet with the maximum amount of success with their finished article, my boss would say anything to make a sale. Not happy with the colours the proper materials come in? Sure, that other one will work. No. It won’t, I used to think to myself. But how can you argue with the owner of a store in front of a customer? She did this knowing full well that in 99% of cases the customer wouldn’t come back and complain because they would think it was their fault for not doing something correctly. The patrons who would complain were knowledgeable enough not to buy the wrong product in the first place.
When I did say something to my unscrupulous boss, she brushed it off, insisting that the project the poor customer was about to embark upon, their hours and hours of work, would come out fine.
Honesty is one of the virtues I hold in highest importance. Bad sales practices are not confined to the retailers you might think they are. Keep your eyes open and do your research.
Ah, how infinite is our wisdom when we’re tired? That really is the question. It’s the reason I left the suitcase laying in the middle of the living room floor and it’s why there was no glass.
Last night after I finished writing my post, I started to get myself ready for bed so that when my son went to bed I could go as well. I considered having a glass of wine, but decided against it for two reasons – one, there was too much left in the bottle for the three or four ounces I usually take upstairs with me but not enough to leave the rest in the bottle, and two, because I was really too tired to stay up and drink it anyway. Likewise with my decision to take neither my laptop nor my tablet to bed with me: I really just needed sleep.
Chris came out to say goodnight to me and went off to bed, so I turned off the light, and the laptop and promptly, in my rush to get to bed, forgot that there was a suitcase laying in the middle of the floor. I tripped, I stumbled, I spent what felt like a full 20 seconds trying to save myself until I realized I was going down. And I did. On my knees and elbows. The pain was so intense, especially from my already sore shoulder joint which I’m almost sure I knocked right out of its socket since I have barely any muscle left to protect it, that I lay there for a few minutes hoping not to throw up. Finally Chris came back downstairs and called to my eldest son who was in the basement and he helped me get back up.
Had I had the glass, the laptop, or the tablet in my hands – I don’t even want to imagine the mess. Had I not tried to save myself I might have hit my head on the bannister. As it was I landed six inches away.
So, is the glass half full or half empty? Thankfully there was no glass. Next time there will be no suitcase.
I’ve just read a fascinating article (which is always dangerous) and I went and generalized it (which is always entirely justifiable… maybe not) and made it about me (which… come on, I’m a blogger, what do you expect).
An article about bamboo.
I’m not a gardener. In fact, if the word “gardener” has a polar opposite, then I’m that. (Blighter? Destroyer of things green? Seriously, you should see my front yard. By which I mean, my front collection of weeds.) But through the whimsy of the internet, I found myself reading this article about bamboo farmers and success. It’s worth five minutes of your time, but here’s the quickly-generalized, me-centric summation of the article.
Bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants on the planet. It grows so quickly and so prolifically, and is so incredibly strong (it has a tensile strength close to that of steel) that it seems miraculous. Some species can grow as much as three feet in 24 hours. (I picture the analogue of my son sprouting up to my height overnight and it gives me the shivering willies.) Yet many people who try to grow bamboo get frustrated and give up and never see it achieve that growth, because the first five years of the seeds’ growth is entirely underground.
Imagine it.
Day one, plant a seed.
Day two, water, check for growth, nothing.
Day three, water, check for growth, nothing.
Day four, water, check for growth, nothing.
Day five, water, check for growth, nothing.
Wash, rinse, repeat, until …
Day 1828, water, check for growth, nothing.
Day 1829, water, check for growth, nothing.
Day 1830, water, HOLY SHARKNADO THERE’S A FOREST OF BAMBOO IN MY BACKYARD.
That’s a heck of a lot of days, a heck of a lot of faith, and an ungodly amount of patience and tenacity: an untold amount of time spent doing a simple but time-consuming thing (watering the plant every day) with not an ounce of feedback that the thing you’re doing is useful, worthwhile, or even productive in any way. For all you know, on day seven the seeds died and turned to dust in the ground, and you might very well be wasting your time. But if you don’t keep working, the seeds will definitely wither and crumble.
And this is a little like writing, innit? Or maybe a lot like writing. Actually, make it a metaphor for whatever you like, but I think it’s particularly fitted for writing. Because we writers do our work underground. We have the inspiration to write and plant that seed deep in the loamy earth of our minds. We enclose ourselves in our batcaves, our secret chambers, our dark enclosures isolated from all human contact, and the words spill out of us like so much irrigation on the soil of our precious ideas. For days, weeks, months we toil in quiet and fear and clandestine hope that our pet projects, our favorite characters, our brilliant plot lines, will take root and spring forth, filling the world with color and the sweet scent of our inspiration … but we have no idea if it’s going to happen. Whether that field of bamboo represents simply getting published, or penning a bestseller, or even just finishing a draft, the finish line can feel so far away it might as well not even exist.
We see the bamboo fields that have sprung up in other authors’ backyards, and that gives us hope–I could have that, too!–but it simultaneously fills us with doubt–will it happen for me? And we don’t have a master gardener standing over our shoulder, telling us to keep our heads down, keep watering the seeds, keep fertilizing the soil, and all will be well. We don’t even have that five-year guarantee that bamboo has. For some, it may happen faster: they’ll have a backyard full of bamboo in the space of a year or two. For others, it may take longer: their garden may take a decade or more to sprout. For still others it may never happen.
But regardless of the speed at which the garden grows, I think any gardener will tell you that it’s not all about the end result. Sure, the rows of tomatoes and the baskets full of roses are the ideal, but even without them, the work is not a total loss. Because the work is therapeutic. Kneeling in the soil, breathing the unprocessed air of the outdoors, feeling the sun on your back, working your fingers in the dirt, plucking the weeds… the work means something in its own right. Likewise, forcing the words onto the page, exploring the characters, designing new plot lines… it means something. Yes, it’s about making the seeds grow, but throughout the process, you learn, you grow. And then, on day 1831, whether your bamboo has pierced through the ground striving for the sky or not, you come back ready to water it again. And again. And again.
Trust in the knowledge that the work matters, whether the bamboo grows or not. You have to be your own feedback. You have to fling your vision forward into the future and visualize those steely shoots springing out of the ground now, starting today, and let that vision sustain you, because the fruits of your labor are just going to be invisible until they happen.
Trust in the bamboo. Keep watering.
Thanks to Linda for allowing me to guest post while she’s out. For more drivel like this, check out my homepage over at Pavorisms.
Over the next few days I hope you’ll all join me in welcoming our Stream of Consciousness Saturday hosts, who have graciously accepted the task of taking over while I’m away. These three wonderful bloggers will be writing posts here at Life In Progress starting tomorrow, to introduce themselves. They’ll be coming up with the Friday prompts and visiting all of your upcoming SoCS posts during the next three weekends.
I know they’ll do a fantastic job and I hope you’ll all visit their blogs and follow them if you haven’t already.
Just so you know, I’ve pre-scheduled both of the One-Liner Wednesday posts that I’ll be absent for, as well as all of the “Second Seat on the Right” posts over at my fiction site, Inspiration in Progress, so you won’t miss a thing!
I have to say, it feels really weird to just end a post without a shout-out to someone after a month of participating in NoBloMooglyWoo and Mr. Fantastic’s Team Pepper Mystery Tour. Really awkward.
So visit your hosts when you see their posts. You’ll be happy you did!!
For my final Team Pepper post I really wanted to find something profound to write. Something to uplift and inspire. Something that people far and wide will remember for years to come. Something from my own mind, rather than words regurgitated from the world wide web. Something barfed up from my own mouth… in a delicate way. A burp almost. But tangible. Something that my readers can latch onto and hold close to their hearts.
Here it goes.
Are you ready?
…
…
…
Get off the damned computer and go outside already! The internet isn’t real life! Real life exists when you get off your ass and live it!!!
I used this prompt to look up a new word. A new word for me, at least. I’d always wondered what it meant; now I know. The word is “insouciant.” It means easy-going, gay, happy-go-lucky, and untroubled.
I want to be insouciant. It’s pronounced “in-soo-see-ant” if you’re wondering. I want to be carefree and not worried about anything. And I think I can be, if I really want to. How, you may ask, would someone with as many people relying on them as I have be insouciant?
I think the key (or one of them) is in not procrastinating. I find that if I put things off I end up with a whole ball of stress sitting with me at the end of the day – stress caused by all the things I need to do tomorrow because I did none of them today. It adds up and I end up worrying. And uninsouciant. According to my spellcheck that’s not a word… and neither is spellcheck. Go figure. But will I worry about that? Hell no!
How else can I be insouciant? I think just by deciding not to worry about things I can be a little more carefree. Not to say that I don’t consider my responsibilities important… but only concentrating on what’s in front of me rather than doing things I’m supposed to be doing AND worrying that I’m not doing something else – that’s senseless. In fact, by fully focusing on the task at hand, I’m more likely to be more efficient at it than if my mind is elsewhere.
So here’s to insouciance! Practice with me, won’t you?
It’s so tempting to drink and blog at times. Some of my best (at least I think so at the time) ideas come to me when I’m less than my regular sober self. But like with anything we humans do after a couple of ounces of alcohol, our bravado goes up as our inhibitions go down.
One of my most memorable (to me, then again I was drunk for all of my drunk posts–there aren’t many) less-than-with-it posts was this one. The lyricist/singer in the picture is known for his liberal drinking habits, though I’m not sure this particular photo wasn’t staged. But I think that tiny post pretty much says it all. Some of the best things that have been written are by well-known drunks.
So what’s the difference between, say, Hunter S. Thompson or F. Scott Fitzgerald and your average blogger? The time it takes to publish.
I need to remember that next time my finger hovers, swaying over the mouse as the cursor rests on that lovely blue button.
So now that I sound like a total alcoholic (which I’m not), I ask all the casual drinkers out there the question: should a pepper post before it’s pickled? Or is a peck of pickled posting perfectly proper?
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
lindaghill.com 