Thinking About What My Daughter Said

I was having a text conversation with my eldest daughter the other night. She thinks she might like to be a writer, so she's trying to write a bit every day. Her roommate was out of town working on a play production for a director they both know. The Musician has acted in a local play with this director; it's how she met her roommate. The Musician said that she was a little jealous of her roommate, and I asked her if she had thought about acting in something again. She told me that it's best for now if she focuses on one thing, in this case, her writing.

I thought today how applicable that is to my own life. What is important to me is fashion history, sewing, and the world of doll collecting. In the past, I have felt embarrassed by the doll collecting, the fashion history is only interesting to a few, and I'm not one of those sewers you'll see on Pinterest who comes up with new and exciting projects weekly. But they are what interests me, what drive me to research and do. The people who blog everyday, that's their thing, writing on a blog. While I love to blog here, and am going to keep doing it, I'm not going to feel guilty that I don't come up with something new and witty to write about every day. I'll just post as often as I can.

Of Writing Many Blog Posts, There Is No End

This little paraphrase of King Solomon's words came to me as I was pondering the huge amount of verbiage that spills out of the internet every day. I don't want to become just another "mommy blogger," but I also don't think my niche is simply supplying news links, with a little of my own commentary. There are already a lot of sites out there that do that, some of them very well. I used to enjoy talking about homeschooling, but those days are long gone now. Still, I do get ideas for blog posts, but mostly around 11PM when I'm trying to go to sleep. And even if I write the ideas down, the spark is often gone by the next day. Still, I've always enjoyed writing, and I'd hate to stop doing it. Right now, blogging is the best way for me to work on writing. Plus, it helps me try to organize my thoughts in a coherent fashion. Mr. BTEG or my daughters could tell you how often I spit out some stream of consciousness from my brain that makes little sense to anyone but me. At least when I write, I can go back and correct something that I didn't clarify enough for a reader to understand. Too often I write only a portion of what my brain is processing, so there is no needed context to what I write.

One thing that will be interesting to observe in the future is that, in an agreement between my psychiatrist and myself, I have been completely weaned from one of my bipolar medications. This was largely out of concern for my physical health: a side effect of this drug can be high cholesterol. While I have already found that I'm having negative and self-accusing thoughts again concerning the past, I'm also hoping to combat those using some of the positive thinking I've gained over several years of mental stability. The interesting part is that my brain is not as numb, for lack of a better word, than it was on the medication. Not that I was a zombie before, but I was kind of floating in a sea of calm, thinking very little. I'm wondering if this new medicinal change will help my creativity, while hoping I can retain mental health. We'll see how it goes.

Hello Again

The surgery was successful, and I'm starting to feel more like myself. Being in the hospital, and out of the normal stream of life, I felt almost like I was a different person once I came home and started feeling stronger. I'm paying attention to what's going on in the wider world, but I still need quite a bit of rest. I'm making positive progress, so I'm hoping to be writing more soon.

Evolve or Devolve?

I've been noticing more and more spelling errors, the kind that spellcheck won't catch, but that still jar me. Popular misspellings generally involve homonyms such as bear/bare or steel/steal. I was unhappy recently to see someone who writes for a living use the word "canon" instead of "cannon." I'm not ready to get out the smelling salts and the fainting couch to bemoan the death of the English language, but I do think spelling, grammar, etc. are important. I wonder if less reading is involved in poor spelling, if people don't see words used correctly and therefore don't know correct spellings. That theory makes sense when I also see idiomatic phrases that people get completely wrong. You know the ones, like "It's a doggie dog world." In this case, people are hearing these phrases pronounced poorly, and never the see the difference elsewhere. Of course, I've heard spelling is being phased out of many curriculum, even in the lower grades. That can't help either.

The Writing Experience

Every time I begin a blog post, and look at the last date I posted, I chide myself for not writing sooner. The thing is, I think about writing something, and I talk myself out of writing it, for fear that it is stupid, or I can't put together some thoughts in my mind, so I drop it. But what I am remembering is my college experience. When I had a paper to write, I always, but always, put it off until the last minute. Even in my freshman humanities classes, where we had to write a rough draft and go over it with a classmate, I never used the rough draft when I wrote the final paper. Instead, I usually became inspired around eleven or midnight the night before the writing was due, and pounded out a paper on my electric typewriter, which usually got a pretty good grade. I don't have to have The Great American Blog Post planned out in my head before I start writing. As in other areas of life, maybe the most important place to start is by just showing up.

The Future

I'm feeling better today. I need to find someone that I can "dump on" when I'm feeling frustrated or confused. Although I should also journal more. Writing things down is really a good way to get things out of my system. Like Karen, I'm starting to feel like I have church issues. Which is surprising. Our church is liturgical and traditional, which I like, and the pastors are great. But is it wrong to want to have friends with some of the people that you go to church with, instead of just everyone being a bunch of people that you see once a week? Distance is also getting to be an issue, with the price of gas, and also because I would like to have some kind of local feeling at my church. We leave at least twenty minutes to a half hour away from most of the people who attend the church. And I am also really not fond of the new location (long story.) I think Greater Cleveland needs more than one confessional Lutheran church!!

I See We're Back

Just a quick post to say hello now that Blogger appears to be back up most of the way. I see a few missing comments, but it looks like home sweet home otherwise. In my misspent youth as a COBOL programmer, I remember a few occasions when a programmer would accidentally take down the mainframe that was located a few miles away. Good times, good times.

And since we're talking about blogging, I've been meaning to write about how much I have seen my writing skills improve over my long years of blogging, especially since I've picked up the pace again recently. I like writing, but I'm not in a good place right now to do much else other than blog, if I ever got the notion to do more. But it's still nice to improve a skill.

In Between

Settling down in our new place. Hasn't helped that we all got sick, but that's to be expected this time of year when your immune system is worn down by stress and extra exertion. My brain is unfortunately too confuzzled (a term coined by the Musician) to write coherently about what I want to write about, this late. I have strong attitudes about things, but I don't feel like I can do serious writing any real justice, right now. Hopefully soon!

Blank Slate

Goodness only knows, there's enough to blog about out there. For some reason, I'm having a hard time getting my thoughts together enough to write a good blog post. Of course, we are moving in just over a week, so perhaps that is a contributing factor. I'm mentally unpacking and arranging things in the new place already. I suppose that's more fun than packing and sorting things here.

And now I just realized another reason for my mental vacuum. The Musician came in to my bedroom talking nineteen to the dozen, and the Dancer was not far behind. I'm starting to feel like I need a social secretary to keep up with them and their plans! Not to mention a dedicated car and driver. I keep going by reminding myself that these days will go by very quickly, so I should enjoy them while I can.

Quick Observation

My tendency to emphasize words in my writing is so Victorian. I can picture myself penning a letter and underlining or even double/triple underlining words. Don't know why I do it except to better get across my "voice." It doesn't bother me although at the same time I hope I don't come across as weird. :)

Untitled

the night falls without a sound, cold and alone are we.
the understanding for which you pray
flares once, then dies,
swept away by the abyss.
all hope must die.

your heart desires no more.
how could you not understand?
our dark thoughts surround us, crying,
we are fallen.

http://www.deadlounge.com/poetry/

The Art of Blogging

I'm feeling blogger envy, of all the people who can write extensively and heart-stirringly about subjects. I'm not going to say I can't write, but I don't know that I'm a good essayist. I tend to be rather brief and to-the-point when I express myself in writing, and I'm afraid it makes me rather boring. I also see my readership dropping, and a lot of hits on my blog are coming from people merely finding a search match to a certain phase or picture on my blog. I still have opinions on a lot of things; I'm just having a hard time putting them into words right now.

Oddly enough to me, life is seeming more demanding than it did when the girls were little. Yes, they can do more for themselves and help out around the house, but there are all the activities they are involved in, wanting to go to friends' homes (wishing we knew some kids who lived closer), concentrating more on schoolwork as the girls get older, especially the Equestrienne who will be starting high school in a little more than a year and needs to be prepared.

I also tend to be a bit in a fog lately. Not sure if it is age, or my bi-polar meds, or the craziness of life, but I'm struggling to put coherent thoughts together. Not ready to give up yet though. If anything, perhaps getting complete sentences and paragraphs out might help my brain-fog.