kellementology

life according to me

Tag: Writing

  • I’m not a ‘content creator’

    I’m not a ‘content creator’

    I think it was late 2006 after I had a complete hysterectomy that I discovered blogging. That wasn’t my intention. I’d gotten a new Mac for Christmas and had a couple of months of recovery ahead of me that involved little or no movement outside of easy home tasks. My brand new Mac sat next to me on a card table while I clicked through the morning television scheduling I wasn’t accustomed to watching. I had been working full time, or over time as a teacher, then school administrator, but had decided to resign after surgery. I thought surely, life would present something I’d missed along the way.

    An early version of Pages with a template for journaling caught my eye one day and I settled in gingerly to begin writing. I remember thinking, Just write. Don’t worry about anything. You know. The voices. The voices that tell you that you can’t write, that you need to stay in your lane. The voices writer Ann Lamott calls radio station KFKD in her classic book on writing, Bird by Bird.

    “Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything that one touches turns to shit, that one doesn’t do relationships well… “

    Perhaps you understand from personal experience. Or perhaps you don’t and now are wildly successful because you have never listened to radio station KFKD. I sincerely applaud you for this. Honestly.

    It is with this mindset that I landed somewhere on the Internet and found a Blog. I’d never heard the term before but quickly found it was short for Web Log — a journal kept on line. Immediately, I was attracted. There were others I could have contact with — others like me. I wasn’t sure what that was at the time but learned it had to do with community. It may not have been called that at the time, but it felt exactly so to me.

    I sampled Squarespace, WordPress, Blogger, and Typepad. After narrowing down my choices to two and creating two blogs (one is this) on two different platforms, eventually I became committed to WordPress. In time, I bought my domains and transferred my writing to the self-hosted format.

    Eight million years have passed. Life has had not only its routine ups and downs, but true traumatic events — most of which I haven’t had the energy to record. As much as I’ve always felt the catharsis writing provides, sometimes I don’t feel well served by rehashing stressful events. Talk about them to someone? Absolutely. A family member, a friend, a professional. For me, at least, this is helpful. Write about them privately? It depends on whether I need to process my emotions. But publically? The desire is there at times, but I’ve got too much to consider.

    Time passes. The need to write never leaves me. If I’m not actually writing, then while I’m weeding, or planting seeds in the basement in frigid March, or painting the ceiling in the upper hall, I’m writing. Sentences begin, a paragraph is constructed before too long. I nearly always quash the urge to memorize it and write it down, promising myself I’ll expand it later. Yet I don’t.

    For the past few years I’ve used Notes, the simplistic grocery list making app found on an iPhone, iPad, iMac, iWhatever. There’s no audience, it just gets the job done. The rage is on the page for posterity, or for whenever I give myself permission to write something for the public. Right now, public consists of about two or three people. If I put a link on social media, I see there are a few looky-loos, but there appears to be no engagement.

    I’m thinking this is perfectly fine because I have missed this view of a digital page I have grown to love over nearly 20 years. I don’t have to think about much other than keeping up with whatever blocks are; blocks are supposedly an easier way to format a post. They’re actually annoying considering they don’t seem to be as easy as the old format. But I see it as brain exercise, and I need that at my age. I need it because I do not want to become whomever my mother is right now: someone who calls me on a perfectly pleasant afternoon to tell me I have a fat ass and to say she doesn’t belong in Memory Care. But I know in less than five minutes she won’t remember the call. Unfortunately I will.

    I hate the effect it has on me — the instant dissolving of what I tend to tell myself is strength or resolve. Resilience! She obliterates every bit of it sometimes during a call and sometimes later, after the Bulldog videos I watch wear off. I wonder if I can just sit in my car in the garage until I’m calm, or better, cease to care. Not caring is a difficult and uncharacteristic task for me.

    I need to clarify caring and this is where writing for public consumption is problematic. Everyone has an opinion about sensitive issues. What I have experienced with my mother in my lifetime may be similar or completely different from others’ experience. What I say about my experience with my mother will most definitely get reactions from others and that is not what I’m after. I’m not after anything beyond writing truthfully about my life experiences and the effect they have had on me. How I’ve dealt with them. How they’ve changed me. What I’ve learned or haven’t learned from them.

    That doesn’t make me a content creator. It makes me someone who writes a journal that is available for the public eye and that is all. The reason I know this is based on how I feel right now after writing all of what is above. The catharsis is alive and well, reducing the sting of the bite.

    I was going to shovel dirt from the pile sitting in our driveway to fill the low spots in our yard. I also considered my obsession with pulling Dandelion weeds from our lawn, or finish painting the south facing garage windows. Writing won. Ultimately, I believe it is what helps me work through this awful problem. The other tasks would simply help me feel practical while not addressing what was bothering me — something I will never be able to fix.

    So here I am, not quite as happily as I once was years ago, pecking on my WordPress interface. Should I care that this once promising at least to me space could become the Dementia Chronicles, or a new version of Mommy Dearest? Remember, I do care, but what often comes with that is more important: Does it matter?

    No, it doesn’t. This Blog is for my mental health. It’s for me. I welcome you to read if you choose to, and to comment with what you think and feel in response to what I’ve written. If you’re anything like me, you search for others who know and are willing to share, or at least understand. If you are, then welcome. Don’t forget to buckle up. The ride is a bumpy one.

  • The effect of a cat on motivation and routine

    The effect of a cat on motivation and routine

    <alt img="Controlling Cat"/>

    If deciding at the last minute to take on a reasonable facsimile of NaNoWriMo was to serve a purpose, it has only taken two days to realize it. Before I was out of bed this morning, mind habitually processing what the day would entail, I recognized the spark of emotion related to motivation. An excuse to ignore everything and with coffee in hand, park myself in front of my Mac. This had to be a good thing.

    But something happened on the way to the kitchen. My cat happened. This is not unusual. In fact, it’s routine. Her morning greeting is urgent and gains volume as I approach the front door. She wants out, and it never seems to matter that my husband has been up and about, and has already let her out. She always returns for the ceremonial exercise that only she and I engage in.

    I open the door and she grumbles as she passes over the threshold, stopping just before she’s completely outside. I wait, she looks at me, grumbles once more before leaning her posterior against the door. I decide I’ll wait until the third or fourth time we’ve completed the round to go out onto the porch and scratch the furry belly wantonly displayed for just that purpose. Priorities. I need to make coffee.

    Once the Bialetti is on, I fill the dishwasher, rinse the sinks, prepare a large bowl of cold, sudsy water for quick wash ups during the day, and assess the rest of the kitchen. It’s good enough to give the impression it’s clean, but more importantly, won’t distract me from the day’s mission: writing.

    Before the coffee begins to well up in the moka pot, I can hear the cat scratching at the front door. She’ll want in, I’ll have a cat food can in hand, ask her if she’d like to eat and pop the lid to get her attention.

    It works every time. She stands as close to the threshold as possible without actually touching it, licking her lips, yelling simultaneously. I know I’ll have to go out onto the porch, and nudge her inside before the game is over. She will be satisfied for a time knowing her food is where it should be, in her bowl. All will be well in her world.

    Coffee now burnt, I tell myself more milk will help, though I know it won’t. That spark of motivation felt earlier has now turned to an annoyance. I recall how long I worked on the piece I wrote yesterday, fiddling with photos, making attempts to write something meaningful when what I set out to do was just write.

    Something occurrs to me. If I was going to spend the better part of a day fussing over a blog post, why wouldn’t I spend that time organizing manuscript revisions? Why, indeed.

    November stretches ahead in my mind, its interruptions now in full focus. Thanksgiving aside, I have a trip booked immediately following and will be gone for a week. And then there is the “staycation” we thought we were so smart to decide upon which officially begins tomorrow.

    I tell myself I’ll have so much to write about.  Stay calm and carry on! And I will. But it has only taken two days to remind myself of a lesson I seem never to learn. I don’t have to commit to an event to engage in an activity, or to change a behavior. To take on a new interest, or rekindle motivation in those once beloved. There isn’t a magic date on a calendar, a finish line, a set of guidelines or rules.

    There is just me, and whatever it is I set out to do. I have to decide whether that matters or not. The problems is, far too many things matter.

    My coffee is now cold, and the cat is sitting just at my office door, yelling. When I get up to reheat my coffee, she will scurry down the stairs ahead of me, grumbling all the way out the back door where I will be expected to give her a morning brushing, and then find tender shoots of grass for her to chew on.

    Routine is what we make of it — or what it makes of us.

    Day 3, check.

  • NaNoWriMo minus the novel

    NaNoWriMo minus the novel

     

    Whenever November 1st comes around, I think of NaNoWriMo. You may think it odd, but once committed to a month of writing nearly 1800 words each day, expecting to complete a novel, you remember. If you’re unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, it’s National November Writing Month. The goal in participating is that participants complete a novel in 30 days.

    I’m not writing a novel this time, but I’ve spent the better part of the last three years working on one I began the last time I participated. I’ve fallen out of practice writing casually, so I’m hoping that if I commit to 30 days of writing for the sake of writing, I’ll find my rhythm once more.

    I’ll write. I’ll sit down, make the commitment, and write. If I’m organized, then I’ll have a plan about what to write. If not, then I’ll fit into the “by the seat of my pants” category. That’s not an awful place to be until it’s time to revise and then “nightmare” is a more fitting description of the predicament I’ll find myself in. Still, I believe strongly in simply putting words to page. The exercise is always interesting, and often helps uncover ideas that otherwise may remain buried. Ideas that may or may not want surface area attention. Like disturbing current day events.

    Times are distracting, and it’s difficult to avoid the lure of angry opinions, or baiting from people once cared for who seem no longer to have anything in common with me. Disturbing, indeed.

    Yet there is much to divert because life is diverting on most days if I allow it. It includes what’s “over the wall,” when one’s home seems to be planted on a postage stamp, and the Suburbiana it’s a part of. It includes people watching and listening, caring or no longer caring. Learning. Aging. Existing in places long outgrown, or never belonged to begin with.

    NaNoWriMo is a perfect outlet. If you’re interested, and even if you’re not, I’ll write here every other day beginning today, alternating with sass & veracity, my alter ego. Food may or may not be involved. Travel may.

    And for what it’s worth, beyond this haphazard post, I plan to be thoughtful.

    Promises, promises.

    Day One.

    Check.

     

     

     

  • Thinking about Process

    Thinking about Process

    I haven’t been writing anything, anywhere. And it isn’t because I’m not motivated, I tell myself, smirking as I think it each time I see my notebooks stacked just to the left of my keyboard. It’s the photos of our recent trip I’ve been working through, trying to learn new Photoshop techniques to make them stand out in some way, worthy of what I remember seeing when my eye wasn’t peering through the viewfinder of my camera.

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  • What was I thinking? Round Two.

    What was I thinking? Round Two.

    Last year as response to a request from a friend, I committed myself to 30 days of writing my first novel during National November Writing Month, lovingly referred to as NaNoWriMo.  Fifty-thousand words written in 30 days qualifies anyone as a winner and outside of being diligent enough to actually write those words, the resulting manuscript file must also be uploaded to qualify your effort.

    Check to all of the above and I was a certified winner last year.  I wrote my 50,000+ words with only a few hitches in my giddy up:  we visited our son in San Francisco for Thanksgiving and were stuck there for two additional nights due to heavy fog up and down the coast.  We love San Francisco and visit frequently, but this was not one of our best travel memories.  Nevertheless, I did write during our delay, then after arriving home, pounded out the rest of the required word count.

    Of course I wasn’t finished.

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  • What routine?

    A year ago January, I made a commitment to lose 50 lbs.  After five months of diligent progress, I successfully achieved a 25 lb. loss and was perfectly on schedule to make my goal, still 25 lbs. away.  But here I sit, probably 15 lbs. heavier, thinking about that and other aspects of my life which continually present challenges.

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  • Fridays and What Ifs

    I missed yesterday’s writing, but it should count that I spent a good amount of time discussing writing with a friend — someone who is also working on his first novel.  And the entire experience left me remembering how much I used to profess that thinking is the most important aspect of writing.  Of course, that doesn’t make much sense if I never actually sit down to write after that thought, so here I am.  Processing.  And I’ll do that through this weekend considering my novel, moving things around, adjusting bits of my character’s life — bits of ideas that only come with letting writing sit for a while.  Letting it sit for as long as I have is probably not a good thing, but that will change in a few days.

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  • Kickstarting a new routine

    Mid-week taking stock of things reveals I’m here and for the third day in a row, writing.  And clearly, writing here means I’m not writing my book, but it’s not going anywhere.  It will be much better waiting for me to establish a routine — even a glimmer of one before I sit down to finish it.

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  • To write, or not to write…

    To write, or not to write…

    I’ve learned that where I write has just as much to do with whether I write than anything else.  Where as in sitting in front of my Mac instead of outside on my tree shaded patio complete with morning cup of coffee, a pen with the just right feel, and my turquoise Moleskin (which is full of thinking about my novel and various explanations of why I’m not writing it).  But that isn’t the kind of writing I’m talking about.  It’s more what I’m doing right now.  The sitting in front of my Mac kind of writing.

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  • Procrastination and Christmas

    Procrastination and Christmas

    NaNoWriMo is officially over and what have I done with my crappy draft of a half-done manuscript since November 30th?

    Well.

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