writing with purpose daily

I just wrote that and I don’t get the concept. Mostly because I don’t do it. In the age of texting lol and idk and such I am attempting to recapture my gradeschool grammar. I can’t remember it, grapple with recalling it and even worse, often fail at executing it. It’s a wonder I can remember “i” before “e” and the like. Hell, it’s amazing I can manage to spell at all anymore.

This is the sad state of my English, the only subject I did well in, actually excelled at, once upon a time. My latest endeavour into folly is the notion that I could actually write a book. When I thought about it more I thought about perhaps delving into bad poetry, or better yet give the haiku a shot but then reason prevailed when I realized I could not disguise poor, nonsensical writing as esoteric poetry. It just seemed wrong. So I am hitting the www at large and Pinterest for outline strategies, writing tips and skills, anything that might…oh crap what is the word…facilitate (yes!!) the bit of writing fancy I might  undertake.This is no mean feat. I’d rather go out in the garden and do some weeding or find a box to move. At least I’d be doing something.

So as I listen to a grasshopper flap its way across the parched landscape and feel the warm breeze move past me, I ponder, I think, wonder and even give my head a shake or two, but there is a determination that persists. It speaks to me and says “Let’s give this a go, finallt.” There’ll be no marks for execution or style, just a kudos now and again for having stayed the course. That will be the toughest trick of all. The toughest I’ve ever tried and I’ve downhill skiied before. Is that relevant? Probably not. It’s just flip and for a moment I thought pretty damn clever.

About that inside my head thing…

I read a lot of what others write and I voice small comments here and there; dispensing little crumbs and bits of opinion and rumination here and there, but I don’t give voice or life to the words of my own. I see lives being lived and expanding into new horizons and I feel mine becoming smaller, the borders of it closing in on me. I’m beginning to feel suffocated.

This is not what I imagined my life to be but I somehow feel helpless to do anything about it; I’ve been rendered immobile. Still I find myself unable to move from the sidelines and onto the playing field. Every new week I make small new resolutions to myself…Eat better, exercise more, get up earlier, leave the house but I am so busy getting in my own way stubbornly, like a reflex, I turn away or push back against the very thing I want to run toward. I’ve been working on how not to behave this way but instead of pushing through I feel as if I am receding further into a small prison of my own making. 

I’m not going to wax much anymore about this, for now. I’m putting it out there, for myself, to remind myself not to double back and backpedal but to slowly inch forward. Keep pushing. Put the words down, put it down there and dare to dream out loud.

Feb 2 Day 1

It’s that time of year again. Hopefully we’re still keeping the promises we made to ourselves. Do more of this, less of that, do that better. Doing more of this is one of mine. I know better to overload my plate with expectations, so I’m keeping it small; it’s only this. It’s February 2. I’m just a little behind the curve.

Now as far as the exercise of writing goes there’s a few things I want to write about. It’s not beautiful prose or a work of fiction that captivates. This nasty trinity tend to eclipse my everyday life, overshadowing all of it. However, I don’t want to expose myself, hang out there on a limb. I think perhaps it is important, sheds some light or maybe not. I don’t know exactly the words will flow….Be patient. Look, I’m in front of the computer on a day when I’d rather burrow under the covers and stay in bed and forget that the world exists. It doesn’t help that it is swirling around me, making it difficult to see. The inertia is profound. My inspiration like my energy is nil.

Just so you know I wanted to delete this and just go lay down where it feels safe, but I know I would beat myself up for not doing something. Maybe I should have tried a feeble haiku instead…but now I hit publish and just put it out there.

this thing

drip drop

I haven’t found the voice that will allow me to craft a story in a way that I would feel compelling. Maybe it’s not really in my wheelhouse. Right now I scribble down this and that from the place that I know best. It’s not that I’m not interested in the world around me, on the contrary. I want to know everything, but what I’ve discovered about myself is that I’m not wired that way. I’m a generalist. I am knowledgeable around many subjects and continually seek to know more about any variety of topics that cross my path and pique my interest; constantly curious. You could view my assertion as a self serving excuse or something more but I am an intensely private person and engaging in this bloodletting is uncomfortable, as much as it is cathartic for me to set it down.  I apologize for this if you don’t really give a crap, but just pass it by if that is the case because I don’t give a crap either. This is my process, and yes this is a public forum, but I’m working on something here.

Getting on with it

This morning I decided to go clear out my yahoo mailbox. Since i don’t use it at all I tend to find a lot of mail piled up in there, most of it duplicated in my primary mailboxes. What I do find are notifications about visits to my blogs (I have two of them), which gives me a pang of guilt because I don’t really post that much anymore though I often resolve to be a more faithful contributor to them. Really, the only reason I keep that mailbox at all is because of my flickr account. The big beast Yahoo swallowed up flickr and insists on members using their login. So there you have it.

I often think that I should merge them and that would make it a little easier for me to maintain them, but that just seems like a cop out.  You see, I want to write more and take more photos worthy of space in those blogs, but I just….don’t. My photoblog has the nifty title of a photo most everyday, which has become a complete misnomer because of my recent sloth. I do have a partial excuse, sometimes I just can’t because I am down for the count. Dizziness, nausea or the inability to see actually the screen very well completely preclude me from being able to sit in front of my computer. I thought having an ipad and not having to sit on an uncomfortable (but beautiful vintage) chair would help, but then my excuse is that I don’t like having to tap out my spinning thoughts two or three fingers at a time. Truth is, when my body allows and the inertia lifts I run around like a maniac, making busy doing other things.

There’s a pang between my shoulder blades right now. When I first opened up this window (because RaynaLele liked a picture on the other blog) I was attempting to sit on a ball to write, but then I discovered what I already knew, that the ball was too low for me too do that. I should have gotten the largest size but then it would have been too big for its intended purpose, which, well, completely defeats the purpose.

So thank you to those people who remind me of these pastimes that are important to me however much I neglect them. I am both inspired and prodded by your praise.

i wonder wonder wonder

 

 

i’ve got, count ’em, 10 drafts sitting and gathering dust, haunting me. i see them every time i launch my dashboard. 10 posts i stopped writing for whatever reason. 10 posts i didn’t have the guts to post. 10 posts where i just ran out of words or just didn’t have the heart to finish and post out in the world at large. some are very personal, but i’ve tread into sensitive territory before, letting my ass hang out there without proclivity. for some reason with a couple of these posts i simply just didn’t. now, after some time has passed i feel like i can’t, even though they aren’t time sensitive. and now what to do? do i put my nose to it, finish them and put them up or give up on them entirely and delete them?

the last of those posts i started today and i think i just won’t get to the end of that one either, but i am not inclined to do anything about it just yet. i’ll make up excuses. i’ll say to myself that it’s silly or pointless, that my to-do list tells me i’ve got a million other things to do, that my shoulder is beginning to ache (which is absolutely true) and i need to get off of this chair for a spell, or i’ll just not do anything about it until a morning like today where i will open it read it and ponder it some more.  the great canadian novel isn’t going to get written this way, but then how would i beat myself up for being such a procrastinator or gutless wonder?

i suppose i should i feel accomplished that i did write this contribution and post it, a whining, driveling addition. it’s something, even if it’s not very much. i did, however, take this picture recently. this counts as something, right? it’s completely unrelated and irrelevant insofar as this post is concerned, but it’s kinda pretty.

creating habit

this morning i was up before light, which isn’t saying much because my apartment is made artificially dark by black out drapes, but when I rolled over, my cat greeted me with a gentle meow, her sleepy morning voice, and I decided to rouse myself and see what the day might potentially hold. i peeked my head through the curtains and found that it really was light out.

fingers of early morning sun, suffused a smattering of morning cloud, were beginning to stream through the buildings beyond my neighbourhood, and my computer glowed, awake from its scheduled sleep, so i drew back the curtains and stumbled to my coffee maker. i’m up almost as early as i am to go to a job that i dislike. but enough about that.

over an hour later i am still at my computer. i’ve been reading saved posts on pocket and my email, fussing at flickr; tending to twitter and facebook and and even this could use some tweaking. oh, and don’t forget instagram. i have just logged into tumblr, though for the life of me i don’t know why. sometimes i feel weak at the thought of keeping it all current, crushed under the weight of it. i’m not in pursuit of any particular goal nor do i have an enterprise that i need to promote, so i’m not sure why i chase after all of this, only that i do. the impetus for this blog is the discovery in my gmail inbox that a bunch of people follow me. they are all strangers to me, but for the most part, they are all compelling and interesting, so here i am, blathering on about nothing in particular. what truly caused me to launch this window open was one of the pages i landed on to do with habit and I suppose that was good enough reason as any.

i’ve been searching for away to create habit (good ones, that is) in the pursuits that truly give me pleasure and that i can get lost in for the longest time. i see friends of mine excelling and expanding on the skills they have through habit, perseverance and dedication, a few things i seem to lack and it gives me pause about how i am leading my life. i could spin it and say i am inspired, which i truly am, so i’ve signed up to get reminded and prodded until i do.

Even though the day has clouded over, I’ll be taking to the streets for a walk. Besides, someone somewhere above my head has started vacuuming and it’s not even 9am.

Gathering dust

I noticed when I finally ventured back onto my blog i got caught up in relearning how to navigate it, instead of diving in and out after posting a picture, which was my intention. I saw that I had 4 ancient drafts just sitting there. I didn’t read them to see if they were compelling to me months later, I  just noticed that they exist. I’ve also got at the least the same amount of illegible scribblings in a notebook I carry with me and a couple letters sitting on my mac’s desktop. There’s also the flashes I carry in my head that fire off at all hours of the day. I used to beat myself up for not writing, which I claim to hold as a passion of mine. Clearly a passion of mine I ignore.

I see now that it’s not that I don’t write, it’s just that I suffer from a paralyzing procrastination. I am like a dragster, taking off from the starting line, but the problem is I don’t get to the finish line. I ruminate and contemplate the words to an inch of their existence and then I just……stop. As if the impetus for the writing has passed and I am simply out of writing gas. One day I’ll gather up all these words and see what they amount to, but for the moment I just let them collect where I leave them and gather dust while I decide what to do anything with them if anything.

press play

drafts of posts are starting to pile up in my box. i know why. it’s a complicated thing, but then again it’s very simple. i am striving for perfection which almost never comes to pass. and while i am crafting this thing for human consumption i am stricken by the most paralyzing procrastination which is tied into my need to be validated by compliments and positive strokes.

but, let’s face it, this almost never happens. people are too busy, there are niche blogs of specific interest, blogs written by authors of exquisite eloquence and all manner of distraction and shiny, baubly things. so when i toss my 2 cents out into the void i don’t fret about it too much once i’ve hit the “publish” button. because then i’ve committed to it finally being done. i’ve finished it. besides, if i suffer from some sort of writers’ remose i can always claw it back and throw it into my virtual garbage can.

so why agonize so over verbiage and words that most people will never read? that’s me. that’s just me being me. i gotta stop that. a few words are better than none. in the same way a few squats and a walk around the block is better than staying on the couch. so here you go, another couple cents from me.