I often wish that I could teach people not to sweat the small stuff. I can’t stand watching people walk around with their minds so focused on trivial matters, that they’re unable to see the big picture.
So what if that guy just stole your parking spot? At least you didn’t have to take the bus with all your children, your strollers, and bags of groceries once you’re finished shopping. What’s the problem with getting the blue ipod when you wanted the black one? At least you have one. How does it matter that you listened to someone at the next table complain about their food? Did you enjoy yours? Then stop eavesdropping!
Don’t get me wrong – it’s not really the complaining that bothers me. If that was the problem, I would be just as bad as they are. It’s the fact that small things stress a lot of people out. Getting one’s blood pressure up, in my opinion, had better come with a whole lot of real problems. Yes, all the little ones can add up. We all have days like that. But even then, don’t dwell! It’ll put you into an early grave… and who wants to die over a chipped fingernail?
I think we all have something that we’ve learned from experience, that we wish we could give the benefit of to others so that they don’t have to learn the way we did: the hard way.
So tell me in the comments: of all your personal life lessons, what would you teach the people around you, if you could?
I need organisation. First, I must state that this post was inspired by our lovely Belinda at Idiot Writing. (You can find the post here: http://idiotwriting.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/organisation/ .) In it, she tells how much more organised she is than I.
When I do finally get a moment to myself to sit and write, I invariably get comfortable with my laptop and, before I begin, I look around the room. It’s a mess. I think to myself, “I need to be more organised,” but do I do anything about it? Of course not! I just got comfortable.
So I write, but in the back of my mind there is the mess I should be cleaning up. I’m unable to fully relax and enjoy myself. Why don’t I just clean it up? Because it will take hours–hours that I could be spending writing. And what’s the use when my darling children will just mess it up again anyway? Doing a little bit at a time is useless. I’ll just end up doing the same little bit again the next day.
It’s a vicious circle of discomfort for me.
I did, actually find something that worked for me once. When I was selling my house back in Gatineau, Quebec, I had to clean up the place to show it to perspective buyers. So I took a picture of the mess, one room at a time. I then worked my ass off, non-stop, until I was ready to take an “after” picture. I was truly amazed at the progress I was able to make, and I had a reward at the end to boot–a picture of my immaculate room.
Before
After
I swore I would do that again when I moved. I made a New Year’s resolution, four years ago, to make and keep this place clean. I did it again three years ago, two, one, and this year as well. HA! The difference? First, I’m not selling, and second, back then I wasn’t writing.
One of these days…
How do you deal with organisation? Or do you? I’d love some suggestions.
I sometimes wonder why I push myself so hard. My determination to write a post every day here on WordPress; my aspiration to finish my novel; my involvement in The Community Storyboard, HarsH ReaLiTy, and A Good Blog is Hard to Find; my ambition to read more, and write book reviews; my wish to help out friends by critiquing their unpublished works… the list itself is overwhelming. Most days I barely notice the work piling up. I love being busy with writing and the pursuits that involve it.
But, Spring Break. Yes, it’s that time of year again. While I’ve had much of today to do the things I needed to get done, I know it’s only a matter of time before Alex gets bored keeping himself busy. And just because the kids are home doesn’t mean the shopping doesn’t still need to be done – a task which requires me to leave my Autistic son by himself – and my paper route, and then there’s my mother’s appointments because I’m the only one who can take her… again, overwhelming.
I think everyone gets to this point occasionally. It’s the stage where we just have to start saying no, and not give in. While it’s exciting, and best of all not boring, there’s a limit at which one shuts down and curls up in a little ball with a straw and a bottle of one’s favourite Merlot.
So if I up and disappear at some point this week you’ll know why. And if I do manage to keep it all together AND keep my blog going without consuming a bottle of wine per day, well, give me a cape and call me supermom.
Just don’t push me off the side of a building to see if I’ll fly. I push myself too hard already.
You have to love it when your utility company sends the most gorgeous man on the planet over to your house to upgrade your internet speed. Needless to say, as my day has progressed it has gotten better.
I’m currently procrastinating over picking up my manuscript. Oohh, a muffin!
Despite what I said yesterday – wait, was it yesterday? I’ll go check. No, it was Thursday, in this blog post. Anyway, despite what I said in Thursday’s post, procrastinating when it means completely putting off something is detrimental. Allowing my mind to wander whilst doing something mindless, as a break from hard work is nothing like what I’m doing now.
It brings to mind an excellent article that my new blogging friend, Angie, shared with me in my comments. In it, she cites the well proven fact that sometimes we procrastinate for fear of failure. What if we finish what we’re doing (such as writing a manuscript) just to have it rejected? It’s silly, really, to think that way. Why begin something in the first place if you’re never going to finish it?
I wrote the novel I’m editing as a NaNoWriMo project in 2011. When I started it, I was writing it for myself. I needed a distraction from the chaos that was my life at the time. Had I not written it, I probably wouldn’t be here right now – I’m sure I’d be in a padded cell, plucking my arm hairs out one at a time and tying them into the rope which would become my escape – one way or another. By the time I finished my manuscript, I knew I wanted to share it with the world. And so, editing began… and continues. It’s a huge project and is going to take many more hours of work before I’ll even allow it into the hands of beta readers.
So why am I typing a WordPress post instead of working on the manuscript I can’t wait to get out? I’m up for suggestions.
“…keep your mind gently ’round the subject you’re pondering.” ~ John Cleese.
This quote is profound, in my opinion, because it’s something I can wholeheartedly relate to. I spent more time playing Candy Crush on Facebook while I was writing my last NaNoWriMo project than perhaps I spent writing. I stopped to play every time I ran out of words, and each time I came to a wall in my story. The real beauty of Candy Crush is that, once I ran out of lives, I had to wait up to thirty minutes before I could play again. I used this forced break in the game to make myself go back to my story. Yet I couldn’t decide why exactly I needed the game. Mr. Cleese, in the video I posted yesterday, explains it.
He says, (and I paraphrase) that when you ponder a problem, allowing your mind to “rest[ing] against the subject, in a friendly but persistent manner,” your sub-conscious will reward you with a creative solution.
If you listen to music when you write; if you find yourself wandering to the fridge, or doing housework – anything that you consider procrastinating, is this not what you’re doing? How many times have you been performing some mundane task when the perfect solution came to you from out of the blue? It’s that “aha” moment which Oprah went on about, way back when, and what it is, is creativity hard at work when you least expect it.
The video I posted yesterday here: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/creativity/ is thirty-six minutes that you won’t regret taking the time to watch, whether you’re a writer of fiction, poetry or blogs. If you can’t watch it right away, I strongly suggest you bookmark it.
How can we all be more creative? How can we be inspired?
I came across this really great Youtube video today. It’s John Cleese, talking about where our creativity comes from and, not surprisingly, humour.
I can’t stress how fantastic this video is. If you’ve ever been stuck on what to write and how to go about finding the tools within yourself to spark your creativity, you MUST watch this.
Right now it’s about 4 inches — which is way too big. I might be okay with three, but I know it’s not what they want. They want two. Two inches maximum. What am I to do? Cutting it is painful, to say the least. Torturous even. At best it just doesn’t feel right. Hell, if I had my way it would be five inches if not more!
I’m of course talking about the thickness of my printed manuscript.
I’ve been working on fixing it, line by line, one word at a time and while it’s true that I’m managing to reduce my word count, I’m finding it very costly. What is the cost, you ask? I feel like I’m deleting my own voice from it. I’m trading word count for style. That can’t be good, right?
I’d like to put a question out to all my published author friends. If I decide to e-publish I can keep my inches and be happy with my manuscript. Size only matters to a publishing house. Am I correct?
For all the readers out there, how do you feel about buying a thicker-than-usual book? Do you give it a chance or do you pass it over? Of course if it’s an e-book, you won’t necessarily even know how long it is until after you buy it–I never do, since the size isn’t in direct relation to the cost.
Have you ever considered that, when you started your blog you created a world for others to visit? You gave it an atmosphere with your chosen theme, with your words and your pictures you provide it with a feeling – is it like coming home? Or does it give the sensation of exploring a strange planet? Is it exotic, or down-to-earth? Has it changed since you began?
I started my blog, naively perhaps, with the intention to showcase my work for potential employers. I was going to write only long, well-thought-out articles and people would visit and “like” my posts and comment with words like, “Nice article,” or “Good job.” At first I hung on every click of the like button, and sponged up the positive feedback like it was a clear spring in the middle of the desert. In short, I had no clue what a blog could be.
It took me a while, but I started to make friends of the visitors to what I thought of as my little room. I found out that, even better than “likes” and faint praise, there could be actual discussion in them thar comment boxes. The “Nice work!”s transmuted from overgrown paths leading into my blog to highways full of people who related to what I was saying. And as they came back again and again, and we got to know each other, my room expanded. It evolved. It became a world.
With the expansion of my world, so too have my ideals. I appreciate this community so much that I want others to share in it. Rather than long, dry articles, I revel in the fact that I’m able to help people connect through their relatable experiences. I realised the potential that WordPress holds when I joined Dylan Dailey for “Every Damn Day December,” where I discovered how pingbacks work and how participating in a prompt can aid in the discovery of other bloggers – and in being discovered.
I launched “Just Jot it January” in a bid to keep the connections going between other bloggers, and I recently started “Stream of Consciousness Saturday” (SoCS) in order to keep the ball rolling.
It seems the more I perpetuate these connections, the more my blog evolves. A comment regarding the crappy little posts that I’ve been writing of late which seem more to bring in “likes” and less content, caused me to examine my reasons for blogging. Sure, I’ve given up the lofty goal of always writing awesome posts – but in doing so I’ve come to do what is more authentically me, and part of my nature, and that is to help people. I’ve realised in the last year that I don’t have the ability to write, much less come up with, long yet entertaining articles on a daily basis. I’m a novelist. For now, that’s what I want to concentrate on. That’s not to say my crappy little posts aren’t beneficial to me – I pay attention to views to see which opening lines get people’s attention, which is something I’ve been advised is essential to selling a novel.
By writing short posts that encourage involvement from my audience, I hope people are discovering one another. All they have to do is look around themselves in my comments – a warm, caring community is that close.
Welcome to my world. Feel free, anytime, to talk amongst yourselves here.
What are you striving for? Is it within your reach? Yes? Then go for it. You want to lose weight? Stop eating cupcakes. You want to write a novel? Get off Facebook and Twitter and spend more time writing. You want a better job? Make more of an effort to get one than bitching about the one you have.
Is what you want not within your reach? Then stop spending so much energy wanting it. You want to be taller? Too bad. You want to live on a yacht the size of an apartment building but you’re on welfare because you’re too lazy to work? Give it up. You want to be younger? Ain’t gonna happen.
I’m so tired of listening to people complain, who aren’t able to either live up to or define their limitations.
How did we end up being a society of whiners? Is it Facebook and that tempting sweet spot–the box asking us, “What’s on your mind?”–that taunts us to write whatever we’re thinking and share it with the world? Is it the message, “You can be anything you want to be,” that’s expanded people’s heads so that they barely fit on their pillows? “Dream big!” they say.
“Wake up!” I say.
Enjoy the life you are cut out for. Know your limitations! You’ll be much happier.
Do you remember how you felt when you started on WordPress? If you’re fairly new here, I would imagine it’s pretty fresh in your mind. Even I consider myself a bit of a newb, but after just a little more than a year I’ve come to feel comfortable here; I’ve found a great community, some wonderful friends, and plenty of people who I can joke around with.
What stands out most in my mind from when I started, however, is how intimidated I felt when I stumbled across a popular blog and I wanted to comment. Should I? They seem like such a tight bunch of people, bantering about things they’ve learned about one another…
So I was considering this, and I wondered if people who are just starting out feel that way when they stop by to read my blog.
In light of my pondering, I decided to change my comment box prompt from “Leave a comment” to what it is now.
How do you make newcomers feel welcome? How do you encourage them to join in the discussion?
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