Backhanded compliments are so fun. Your mind just twists them around and around like a little möbius strip. Apparently, I use this LJ thing too much as a journal (the laundry is all done) and not enough as a blog (I saw a velvet sky tonight, streetlights spread their clean, white light). To that I say: Pbbbb!!! 😛
My brother, the idea man, has told me in no uncertain terms that I need to do more creative writing here. The latin phrase with which I’ve titled this journal seems to have escaped him. Or else it’s not IN THAT CRAPPY DICTIONARY from 1989 that he really needs to update. What he dismisses as paltry excuses are the following:
1) I don’t write like that.
2) I don’t usually have time to write like that.
This isn’t a condemnation of my brother’s idea that I should be doing more creative writing, far from it. I agree with him. However, just because others are getting book deals out of their blogs does not mean that I’m the kind of writer that would ever be in the running for such a thing. While I AM trying to get back into my own personal swing of things, it’s an uphill struggle made heavier by the fact that I’m dragging a very full life along with me, one that includes a husband, 2 children, a full-time job, a part-time job, and a house, not to mention the rest of the burrs I have sticking to my clothing. Writing this journal the way I do (part journal, part blog) is all I can manage at the moment. I like to think I’m doing a semi-decent job of it. Maybe.
Writing, for me, is far from an effortless process. I mull things over and think things through and get them partly finished in my head before I ever start writing them out. Even the short stuff. Even the stuff about the weather on the way to work. This is why my essays and memories and such are so infrequent.
Considering that I hadn’t written a WORD creatively, pretty much, in the last 6.5 years, before I started this journal, these baby steps are about where I ought to be.
And now, since the laundry is done, and the dishes are washed, and the children are asleep in their beds, I have to get back to work on webpages and AWC stuff and the everyday minutiae that makes up my life. I appreciate both the encouragement and the compliment I received this evening, and hope to start living up to them at some point.
Hypnotizingly hilarious time sinks: Condensed parody versions of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King.