March 2020?

I’d have to look again, but I believe the last time I was here was March of last year. I want to say the 20th, but I only registered March for sure. As I actually logged onto my blog it occurred to me that March of last year was just about when the state went into lockdown mode for COVID-19. I should have been documenting THAT world since then so I would have a clear memory of the events that transpired.

Now it is January of 2021 and while COVID-19 is still ruling the world in terms of being a pandemic, the presidential election and the insurrection on the Capitol Building is doing its best to overshadow any deadly virus news. Bad behavior will draw the attention of the masses, especially that of people in power on the wrong side of the media. Don’t read too much into that last statement. You know it’s true. The media tells the story within a framework that also holds a mindset. I suppose we could argue, but it seems to me this platform of mine is truly mine alone. Not many visitors on this site.

Arguing politics is a waste of time. Whether you be on the Left or the Right your feet are already braced against anyone pulling any harder on the rope between you. New ideas are only welcome if they come from your idea bank.

Another Page …

If a day in a life is a page in our story, then I have lived 22,432 pages of life.  Even in the novels written by Stephen King this could be fifteen copies of  The Stand.  And at sixty-something years old I have yet to get it down. They say we spend our time doing the things we truly love. They are wrong. We are compelled to do the things we are expected to do by society and those people around us we feel obligated to please. We list the day’s tasks and omit the things we love because they are a guilty pleasure that should not be listed. Perhaps, we should change our thinking about these things. I like how that feels when I think about it …

1. Let out the dog.
2. Make coffee.
3. Feed the dog.
4. Cook breakfast.
5. Rouse the family and get them ready for their day.
6. Take out the trash.
7. Paint the utility room.
8. Organize the garage (again).
9. Find something for dinner.
10. Let the dog out.
11. Run errands.
12. Cook dinner.
13. Clean the kitchen.
14. Take a break.

 

This list is too short and leaves out some key elements …

2a. Drink my coffee and watch the news for half an hour.

7a. Take a nap.

8a. Go for a walk if the weather allows it.

11a. Buy myself a new tool at the hardware store. (No wonder the garage needs organized again.)

Maybe my days are not so bad, but I need to add in some specific time to write. I also need to find a purpose in my writing. So much of what I leave on this blog is random ramblings. Some of these are actual pieces of my life, most are made-up parts of stories that are quite possibly seeds to the stories I should be writing.

How about a commitment?

Maybe tomorrow I will write!

Again …

There are so many things we do again and again. Some unique things like travel or an odd hobby and then we breathe … again and again. My thoughts are thick with uncertainty today. My fingers are numb from the work I have been doing.  The keys feel hard and cold. The words are slow to come and look ominous. There are books stacked around me that are not read. The words I claim to love so much are neglected and subjected to the dust that holds them to the floor. Even as I write almost one hundred words I am already thinking of the things I need to get done today.

And it is cold outside.

 

Big Projects

1. Start a new business.
2. Remodel 900 square feet if kitchen and adjoining living space.
3. Do three medium projects for the kids.
4. Read three more books.
5. Write three chapters of a book.
6. Do sub-contractor projects for needed income until the business is standing on its own.
7. Take steps to get physically stronger and in shape.
8. Eat so that I drop my body fat percentage by ten points (28% to 18%)

These are the things I have slated for January.  There is also a weekend in Florida toward the end of  the month and I left out that I need to get my tax information ready by month end so I can plan my taxes for 2020.

It is going to be a busy-busy year!!

Finished my book …

Almost!  The one I am reading, that is.  New Year’s Eve became a stay-at-home event due to a bit of stomach flu.  Not me, but I decided to stay at home anyway … and read.  I read about 400 pages in one day and have maybe fifty pages left to finish. An hour, tops.

One of my resolutions for 2020 is to read more books.  I have not set a specific target.  Knowing books vary so much in length and depth, it will be hard to set a number of pages or books to read.  Perhaps, I will set an amount of time each day to sit in quiet and get lost in a book.

I have a list of errands to run today.  The first two include making coffee and reading!!

More of the same …

I am reading a book today. It surprises me how much physical effort it takes to stay to the task. I am stiff from sitting, tired from staring at the page, and wondering where this story has yet to take me. One of my goals for 2020 is to read more every day, whether it be fiction, self-improvement, finance and wealth, or my bible. Reading is exercise for the brain as is exercise and the act of learning. I also plan to exercise physically each day, even if it is as simple as a walk in the neighborhood. Goals are important and in this latter stage of my life they may be more important than I even knew.

I may list a few just for my own benefit:

1. Read more.
2. Exercise more.
3. Start my business.
4. Grow my other business.
5.  Stop spending and save some money.
6. Invest in someone who will appreciate it.
7. Minimalize the amout of stuff I own from my clothes to my stored-away junk.
8. Write every day, either in this blog or on my computer.

I look at the list and wonder if it is prioritized. You know, like subconsciously? I look at each item and can reason it is the more important of the group. I also can think of several more objectives I should have listed that involve loving others and enjoying life from a social standpoint.

I guess I will leave this entry at mid-thought. There is so much more to consider when establishing goals, not to mention the goals to avoid. You know, not doing the things that waste so much of my time these days … YouTube vidoes, television and that god-awful phone that always beckons to me through chimes and rings to check and see what is up online.

I wrote today. Even if the words are a collection of ramblings, they are words nonetheless.

Beginnings … again!

I once wrote a paragraph that described an old man, sitting in a wheelchair, in a nursing home.  He was watching snow fall across the Rocky Mountains and though all the beauty God could create was out the big windows of the home, he was focused on the individual flakes hitting the glass, melting and running down. His thoughts compared the snowflakes to his own, long passed, life … no two days exactly the same though they were all made of pretty much the same stuff. The snowflakes melted and washed away so much like his memories were fading.  I wrote that paragraph back in the nineties, perhaps 1993 or 1994.  An easy twenty-five years ago if my arithmetic serves me still. I have probably written it two or three more times throughout the years and while it has served these several times as a beginning for a story, the story has never been finished.

It seems that every year, about this time, I get melancholy about my life and the things I have accomplished, or perhaps not accomplished, when I think about writing.  It remains the one thing I want to do that I continue to fail to develop into anything meaningful, even to me. So, as I approach yet another new year, another opportunity to begin something new and meaningful, or prosperous, or just satisfying to my own soul, I think I will allow myself one more beginning before my snowflakes are all melted.

 

M o t i v a t i o n

I am looking for some motivation today, or perhaps I am simply looking for the strength to get my butt moving toward doing something productive.  I worked a long day yesterday and now I have the aches and pains of pulling and stretching most of that time.  It’s the price of growing old and not exercising regularly.  Things you need to be loose are just too tight.  And, of course, the things you want tight keep getting looser, as well.

I bought a book of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories.  He is a Nobel Prize-winning guy from the first half of the last century (1920’s – 1940’s) and his stuff is good enough kids still read it in school.  I am sure I read some of his stories in school, but only enough to get by the English Lit teacher’s grading scale.  I put so little effort into being young and then now find it takes so much effort to just live each day.  Yes, I am grumbling.

SO, perhaps reading Hemingway will inspire me to write some award-winning stuff? He was almost a hundred years ago.  We are due for another Great!! All I need now is a tropical island, a pipe and some good whisky.

Today

Today is … what? The greatest of our gifts as tomorrow is not promised and yesterday is gone forever.  Do you suppose any of us understand the real value of today, of now, of the moment within our grasp and what we could do with these moments?  It is hard to understand time.  It is our most measured resource.  We get so much each day and we decide pretty much how to divide it up among the important things in our lives.

I slept from Midnight until six-thirty.  I got up, made coffee, cooked a small breakfast and watched TV while I drank my coffee.  The weather was a bit breezy, chilly and rainy until about eleven.  (More coffee, TV and a scant bit of writing.)  I ran some errands, assessed a small job, decided the rain was too much threat to start the job.  Back home.  More TV. A nap.  I then went to another job assessment, collected some cash from a contractor, assessed one more small job and then home again.  Made myself a drink, decided no more TV and came in here to write a bit.  I suppose dinner is on the horizon, then more TV – The Voice is on tonight.  Perhaps rewatch the GOT battle scene of the century and finally more sleep.

But what if I woke at midnight and somehow knew it was my last day? Would I sleep? Doubtful. Who would I call? What loose ends would I tie up?  Would I be so funny on Facebook? Would I sit down to write in my blog and what might I say on this my last day?  I would pick my words most carefully and make sure the proper people saw them.  Frivolous would no longer be in my range of time-spending activities.

I am sixty now, have been for six months or so.  I am in the last quarter of my life, the final period.  I am not guaranteed twenty more years.  I just hope twenty is in the cards and pray most of them are healthy and strong years, but we are not promised a single moment beyond the one in hand right now.

Story

Writing fiction is the telling of stories, I think.  And it is doing it in a manner that pulls at the emotions of the reader.  I read a story yesterday that involved death and dying, horrific loss for an old man and his long before lost wife.  I think the author was trying to mingle some emotions in his story.  Perhaps the grief of the husband, his loss of his wife in a car accident.  Now the old man is just driving up and down the road looking for … her, the place in the road that would lead her to him, or maybe the window death provides for him to be with her.  I am not sure, nor was I ever connected to this story, except there was a thread of foreboding and searching.  I don’t know if the author was searching, the man in the story was searching, or if I was searching for something I do not think any of us found.  Perhaps this was the intent?  I may have just talked my self into reading it again and seeing what I missed the first time round.

I woke today feeling alone. My wife was right there in the bed with me, but there was something heavy in my mind.  Whatever it is, it continues to sit on my shoulder and slow my hands this morning.  The coffee is still good, though.  Hopefully, the spark of black will wake me up to the task at hand, but first a word from our sponsor!!

This is a difficult day to write.  I feel no purpose except to get words to the page.  My thoughts are all over the place.  I have many things to get done today and none seem achievable.  (The coffee tastes better, but I am still groggy.)  It is a bit early yet and the sky is not yet fully lit by the sun.  Maybe I just need the day to begin and then I can follow along?

Well, erase, publish, leave without saving?  Each an option and none of any real value.  I think I will go read for further inspiration and see if I have anything to say after …