Another Blogger’s Sick Day

I just can’t do it.  I can’t let today be the day I don’t make a post.  Oh, I know, there have been a few days I’ve missed, due to computer problems or, well, falling asleep.  I made my post for those days as early as possible the next morning.  I thought briefly of doing that today, but, well, here I am, here is the laptop, my fingers are not broken, I have  internet connection, and I am awake.

Full disclosure:  I don’t want to be.  I think I am coming down with a cold or something.  I’m tired, I have a sick headache, I feel inclined to do nothing but whine.  My dear husband, Steven, suggested I take today off.  It was a kind, loving suggestion.  But I just feel if I take one day off, I will take all the days off, and then I will not be a blogger any more.  I suppose that would not be such a great loss to the blogosphere.  There are plenty of bloggers out there, many of them better than I am in different ways.

So I begin to ask myself, why am I still posting every day?  I started this blog in May of 2011 with the intention of posting every day for one year.  I don’t know what I thought was going to happen after a year, but it seemed a good goal to set for myself.  Now six years and a couple of months later, I am still at it.  Sometimes I feel a little proud of myself for that.  Then I think of all the foolish posts I’ve made along the way (YES, I realize this is one of them! Sheesh!), and I wonder.

However, when one is coming down with a miserable cold, it is not the best time to question one’s life choices.  One is likely to feel the only good choice would be to crawl into bed, pull up the covers, and cry.  Well, at least I won’t do the last one.  For one reason, it dehydrates one to cry, and it is important to stay hydrated, especially when ailing.  I am sure some readers will feel I might just as well have taken tonight off (you know who you are). No matter.  I am counting this as my Monday Mental Meanderings, and I am going to make myself some hot tea.  Thank you for tuning in.

 

Writing and Running

In lieu of my usual Wrist to Forehead Sunday or a Blogger’s Day Off, which I was quite inclined to take, I offer a brief meditation on writing.

Two things the reader may or may not know about me by now: (one) I run, but I sometimes have difficulty sticking to it. I’ll go for months running regularly, improving myself, writing about it and in general enjoying it. Then I stop, for one reason or another, and often have difficulty starting up again. (Two) I have started many novels and only ever finished one, despite being, I make bold to say it myself, a pretty good writer.

I started running again yesterday after a pause of more than a month. It was awesome. I will surely run again within the next couple of days. I told my sister, Diane, about it when we talked on the phone. She told me she ran and walked with their recently acquired puppy. It seems the puppy likes to run with her. I told her it was a good way to begin running: walk and run. I have done it. Now, I said, I have been running enough and stopping for a short time enough, that when I start again I run for a short time, say 20 to 25 minutes (it was 25 yesterday), then increase it by 10 percent each week.

Talk turned to writing, because Diane is a very good writer and usually has a novel or two in the works. I said how I am having a hard time with my novel. It has reached the stage where I can’t just write: I have to figure out how the plot as a whole will unfold and then write the specific scenes necessary. I talked about how it seemed I should spend all day on Saturday writing, say while Steven is at work, but I never seem to.

Diane made the suggestion that I treat it as my running: that is, work for a set time, say 20 minutes, then stop. Do that for a week or so, then up the time. I had actually thought of this method but not implemented it with any degree of success. However, when somebody smarter than you suggests something, suddenly it seems like a MUCH better idea than when you thought of it yourself.

In fact, Diane has done it herself. She works on her novel during her lunch hour. She jolly well has to stop at a certain time, because she has to go back to work. Then she returns to her writing all fired up, because she didn’t work till she was completely petered out.

It’s brilliant! I tried it. Sort of. I spent more than 20 minutes typing in scenes I had previously written. Wow, this novel is a mess. I finally settled on who the murderer is, and I’m not clear on who gets killed.

Well, that is neither here nor there. The point is, I shall continue to write. I shall build up my writing muscles. I shall also run. I’ll write blog posts about both. I hope you’ll stay tuned.

I Am Never Going to Get to that Murderer

I tried, just now, to finish the post I was writing about the movie concerning the murderer dropping his victims in the Seine. I wrote a whole post about how I got hung up on it last weekend. I thought sure when I got back to it, I would breeze through it.

Not so much.

I think the problem is I got hung up on the Seine before I had written as much as I thought I had. And what I had written was, well, really not as good as I had hoped. What’s a blogger to do?

My original plan, in fact, was not to write about movies today at all. I wanted to do a Saturday Running Commentary. Then I decided not to run. I took my schnoodle Tabby for a walk instead. A pedestrian post, perhaps?

It was a pleasant walk, before the day got too hot and humid. It was, unfortunately, quite uneventful.

The reason I decided not to run was that I was recruiting my energies to clean my house. We plan major basement cleaning (the site of the flooding I’ve been kvetching about for two weeks now) after Steven gets home. My self-imposed assignment while he worked was to clean as much of the house above ground level as I could get to.

Well, I’ve done a cleaning post before. I don’t know that it makes for that great a post, but it adds interest to the actual cleaning. When you are mentally searching for words to describe cleaning a toilet while you are actually cleaning said toilet, it somehow becomes just a little less burdensome to clean the toilet.

There is also the thought that one could wait till later to make the blog post. One could think of more things to write about the movie. One could watch a different movie. One could have further Mohawk Valley adventures that would be more worth the writing about.

One, of course, being me.

But I want to get this done now, so here it is. Call it Wrist to Forehead Saturday, call it another Blogger’s Day off, call it Yet Another Post About Why I Haven’t Written a Post. In fact, under the circumstances, you can even call me late for dinner. Ooh, maybe that should have been the headline.