ponderings of the day

Time. Money. Priorities. Desire. Time.

Commitments.

Responsibilities.

Desire.

A time of reflection on what I'm doing and what I want to do and what I need to do. What I have done and have been passionate about. And if it is all still true or if. If. Maybe things have changed. Maybe I have change - no, I know I have changed.

I should erase all of this and think these things through and then write up a neatly crafted essay on time and change and desire and finding right mind and right action. And acceptance.

Or I can leave this as a marker that life happens and sometimes desires and needs don't fit neatly into the space we're allowed. And decisions need to be made.

And in this land of "you can have it all" that maybe, just maybe, sometimes it's okay to say, "no, I can't" or "no, I don't want to pay that price and so I will choose." Then choose. At least for now. To acknowledge that people change and opportunities change and life sometimes gives us something new which doesn't fit. And we do have a choice. Not necessarily an easy choice.

This post feels like it is going down the rabbit hole of "but what about X?" (there are so many Xs and look at it, maybe your X and my X intersect and collide so who's half of the X has dominance?), or "do you mean to say that we all can control everything which happens to us no matter what?" (which I don't, but I don't have an answer about when and why and how we may or may not), or what about the other beings with which we regularly interact and impact and am impacted by. Questions. No answers. Thoughts.

Time.
Desire.
Priorities.

photograph from GTD Times

random: adding to a rant

Some time ago I wrote about overhearing several conversations about "scheduling births." I was indignant about women who were scheduling way ahead of the when their babies would be born - either through induction or through a planned C-section. I do understand that some women must have a C-section for a variety of reasons; I guess I wasn't really talking about them. I was talking about those who pick a date based on whatever it is they base it on - I guess when they are assuming conception happened and taking the average time a baby is supposed to gestate and then scheduling the birth like they schedule their haircuts and manicures.

Then today I heard a lecture where there is a new reason there are more induced labors and C-sections: doctors' schedules. Yikes. I had not even considered that as a reason. I know the docs are busy; I think many of us average people are busy, too. But some docs apparently have a specified amount of time they can hang around waiting for a baby to be born. Which means the time of birth is, apparently, also subject to economics.

Huh.

found: new Larry Lessig video

A new video from Larry Lessig as part of the Free the Airwaves/whitespaces project.

Random Thought

...or maybe not that random...

This week I'm thinking about "duty" and "desire." Desire being of a general sense and in terms of creativity. I'm assuming that duty and desire don't have to be in opposition, but I often behave as if they are. Often I feel they are in conflict. I'm still exploring the idea and seeing what it looks, tastes, smells, sounds, and feels like. Sometimes I find myself feeling inspired and there is a thought I want to follow down a creative path - sometimes a yearning that I almost feel I can't stand to ignore. And I'm on my way to a job or on my way home where I will go to my office space and work more because I have reports due or papers to grade or videos to evaluate and they all have deadlines.

And the desire, the inspiration, the creative spark try to hold on. Sometimes they are temporarily misplaced among the debris of my duty. On one level I believe that I can't shirk my duty because I believe duty is tied to financial well-being and I believe that if I let loose of duty hanging like an anchor around my neck then I will be adrift with nothing. Fortunately, on another level, I don't let myself totally get away with that belief.

And the desire to create does not go away. No matter how often I try to ignore it or put it off until later. It is still here. It pokes its head up here and there, reminding me, turning me toward that other place of creativity.

And I think: what if I have a duty to create?

(silk painting detail) Tea Ceremony #4 by Dot.

time poverty

I'm still grappling with the concept of brevity and shorter is better and, in order to keep up with the international (national?) trends and keep the modern audience, we must condense and write everything in fewer words. Or we'll lose them. Flash fiction. Short shorts. Books that can be downloaded almost instantaneously to an electronic device which doesn't even need wifi because it runs on the same circuitry as mobile phones and is thinner and weighs less than a paperback. More in less time and less in less time and when can we pencil in that latte, no make it an espresso because I've only got five minutes in which to see you.

Yikes. Do we always have to do more better faster in a microsecond? I read the phrase "time poverty" on the website Slow Movement and knew I had to write something about the need for speed, even if I wasn't ready to delve deeply.

I have much more to say on this topic. But, for now, three writing prompts and some music to go with them. I was poking around for music to counteract or help transition from the hectic to the contemplative. I discovered the Jeff Ball Band, which is Native American flute, hang drums, and guitar. I'm inserting one YouTube video and a couple of click and go links.

PROMPTS
* If I had one more hour in each day ...*
* The morning air along the river ...*
* She decided to blow off all her appointments that day ...*


More music from the Jeff Ball Band:
Ancestors in Daguerreotype
Improv by Jeff Ball & Ted Natale
Lost on MySpace

Re-Vision

Writing has temporarily taken a back seat. Necessarily, I say and yet I wonder. I survey my surroundings and check my appointment book - a PDA now instead of a book and it weighs only four ounces. Yes, I've been busy with work. Yes, I had a show this week, was out of town on the whirlwind surreal trip to planet Las Vegas last week, and have various homework assignments to grade. *And* I did manage to some writing.

I'm not getting very far with revisions right now. But I know that will come.

Thinking back to my original goal of writing every day - I'm nearly there, even with the income-generating work dominating my schedule. That's good. It's progress. I have a bunch of new material and, soon, I will have time to work on revisions.

Re-vision.

I may not be revising my writing, but I am re-visioning my priorities. When I'm done catching up with the grading of homework for my in-person students, I will start back on revision of some new pieces and a couple pieces I've been working on for a while which feel nearly done.

Sometimes when I've felt a little stuck for how to start writing when my brain is swirling with plays and grades, I've gone to WordLush and used the random list to prime the creative juices. Below are today's words. If you haven't been there - go take a look. They have a Daily Word Spittoon which spews seven words; you can also see previous creations from other lists. The intent is to write something using all of the words. A couple characters have surfaced in some of my spittoon writings, which I plan to revisit when I start my revisions. Today's words are:
* miser
* for profit
* assonance
* sputter
* snout
* perfidious
* medusoid

Cowmmedia d'ell Arte by Serena Barton
as part of the Kows for Kids project

I have a confession

I have a confession. I am a writer and, until recently, I wasn’t writing every day. I wanted to; I planned to; and it didn’t happen. I am not only a writer, I said defensively. I do other things and my day job sometimes starts before the sun rises and ends some twelve to fifteen hours later. Not that I get paid for every one of those hours; it includes driving from place to place which is unpaid, and searching for parking, and everything that goes with this type of work. Self-employment is grand and, sometimes, the hours required to make a few bucks are long.

But I digress.

Over and over I’ve heard that, in order to write, you have to write every day. Because of several failed attempts at daily writing, I committed to writing most days. Some weeks that worked and then, “most days” became, well, four days is a majority, right? Then it was, well, this week was only three, but that’s all I could do. Really. Then that slipped into thinking “maybe next week I can write.”

Several years ago I went through The Artists’ Way with a small group of friends. I did manage to do my morning pages every day and it was helpful. Then one day slipped, then two days. And soon, with a change of careers which meant going back to school, that was dropped. I thanked the Morning Pages for helping me find the new career and told them, “Tata for now, I’ll see you when I come out on the other side of this river of courses and cultural adjustments and have built my new career.” Which I assumed meant two years of college and maybe one to two years of getting established in the new profession.

That was thirteen years ago.

Over the last couple years, I started going to writing workshops and groups again. When I go, I write more. Not surprising, because it helps to be around people who assume I’m writing. I know it’s not really them holding me to my commitment, it’s me. But having a place and people to interact with keeps it higher on my priorities list.

Having a writing partner helps, as well. Two weeks ago I met with my writing buddy and he, fresh from a three week vacation in France, announced that we must Write Every Day. He was reading a book I gave him a couple months ago, which was touting the necessity of daily writing. Yeah, yeah, I agreed. If only we had the time. Yeah, he agreed. And we said we would try to write most days, when we could. We also share the other profession.

Three days later I started this blog. I awoke that day knowing it was time to stop saying, “I will” and change it to “I do.” For whatever reason, I have a blog ethic: if a person is going to do one, you have to keep it up. And for writing – that means to write.

This blog – in addition to my desire to share my experiences and inspirations with the hope they are useful to someone else – is my commitment to myself to write every day. Not everything I write is posted here. My other writing includes revisions, pieces of poems, freewrites from a spark of inspiration – and I’ve been visiting WordLush to gather the list from the Daily Word Spittoon and writing something from that. I have been posting those creations at The Writing Vein Playground.

When I let go of having to sit in one place and write at the same time every day for a specified amount of time or number of pages, guess what happened? I’ve been writing every day! Sometimes it’s 15 minutes, sometimes it’s two hours. Sometimes I’m working a new story or revising an old one. And sometimes it’s this blog and the word spittoon game.

Look folks, I’m writing!

"Black scribbler" by Dot. 1992
12" x 48" silk painting

from the mouth of the Spittoon

In case you haven't visited it yet, I thought I'd give you a taste of what can be found at WordLush, a website with word games. My writing, generated from the Daily Word Spittoon's word list on 1/24/08:

"flailing through time"

As he tossed feverishly in his bed, sheets and blankets threatening to choke or strangle due to flailing limbs, his voice suddenly shot out. Suspended between the crying cat’s howling in the window and the ringing of the telephone, the acronymic words, guttural and raw, wafted down the stairs to the guests sipping tea in the living room. Their host emitted an uncharacteristic onomatopoeic utterance, excusing herself from their presence, to check on her nephew hollering from the guest bedroom on the second floor. She couldn’t remember why she had agreed to let herself be saddled with this boorish lout. Placing one foot in front of the other, she laboriously climbed the stairs, his shouts growing louder in a cacophony with the crazy cat and his Blackberry screeching on his desk. As she entered what used to be her study, the inscription on the doorway sent her back to the day she agreed to take in her sister’s only son.

“Your debt is paid; bless you sister.”

[The word list: *unruly, *saddled, *suspended, *acronymic, *feverish, *onomatopoeic, *inscription].

To see the word list for today, hop on over the WordLush and take a peak. You never know what is going to be found in the spittoon!