Hello All,
Yes, yes, I am bowing down, groveling before you for my terrible lack of writing. But I have an excellent reason why I have not been writing.
Bob's mom, Donna, arrived on October 10th, and is staying until October 29th.
And really, it would be rude of me to disappear into my writing den/litter box micro-cube of a hidey-hole to pound away on a keyboard. I wouldn't want to be rude.
It has been fantastic having Donna visit. I encourage you to never underestimate the subtle and wondrous joys of having a whole new adult to talk to. A fresh perspective. Unexpected answers to my same old questions.
Surprisingly, she has been blissfully content to just hang out amid our madness.
Of course, when she arrived she was breaking out in a multitude of bruises, thanks to an early morning lightbulb-changing tumble off a ladder right before she left home to start the trek here. So we got to watch her rest up from that horrific excitement and nurse her bruises.
Then as the bruises started to fade she caught a wee cold. So she was again very content to relax, sip tea, pop indecipherable cold medicine and observe the dubious joys of teenage sibling squabbles.
But now she is feeling better, and we have had our chance to drag her around Kyoto. Aya and Patrick toted her off to join them at their Japanese class last Friday. Bob took her to the bamboo forest and gardens in Arashiyama, and while they didn't quite make it to the top of the mountain to see the famed monkeys, they did ride in a rickshaw--what Donna evaluated as "the only way to see things".
And tomorrow I will be taking her to see one of the larger historic festivals in Kyoto, the Jidai Matsuri, where thousands of people dress in traditional Japanese costumes spanning over 1000 years and parade from the Imperial Palace to the Heian Shrine.
Yet, while Donna seems happy to see the various delights of Kyoto, she seems even more delighted to stroll around our tiny sleepy neighborhood, to help the kids with their homework, and to try her hand at making friends with our exceedingly shy ragdoll cat, Raku.
I suppose it is a matter of perspective.
Some people travel to escape.
Some people travel to explore.
And still others travel to reconnect.
Perhaps this last is Donna's real reason for flying thousands of miles. So that she can curl up with Aya under a blanket upon our couch and watch scary movies, or stroll to the store with Patrick on a warm Fall evening.
And perhaps this is the best reason of all.
Until next time....
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
One Massive "Catch 22" Headache After Another
Hello all,
Y'know, I have these fairly frequent moments when the blog sits here and stews in its own virtual madness. And I feel thoroughly ashamed of myself.
Thoroughly.
And once the languishing blog starts heading towards a full month of not being updated, the guilt consumes me and I am drawn to doing at least a short update.
I mostly do this to assuage the all-consuming guilt.
But I also do it so I do not permanently lose the roughly, oh, 5 people who actually read this blog.
So here I am.
After some thought about why I can't seem to reliably put fingers to keyboard in any dependable manner, I realized my problem:
Catch 22.
I madly, madly love writing. I always have a notebook with me in which I jot down random story ideas (99% of which never see the light of day), scribble amusing or mind-boggling quotes I come across, or sketch out possible multi-million dollar ideas (like the one I had about combining Alka Seltzer and shampoo to make a self-scrubbing shampoo for lazy or very tired people).
But I am always trapped in this Catch 22--I also love teaching. And when you get right down to it, people pay me actual money to teach. People, so far, do not pay me actual money to write.
Which is a shame, since I could easily spend hours and hours and hours writing. There have been small isolated times in my adult life when I had a few non-teaching pockets of time. During these times, I got up at 7:30am, ate food, drank coffee, and was at the keyboard by 8:30am.
At that point for me, time stopped. It was just my brain pouring words through my fingers.
Typically during these times, the next time I managed to raise my eyes from the computer screen it was 6:30pm, I had to use the restroom rather badly, and Bob and the kids were standing around staring at me waiting for dinner to materialize.
It seems that when I am writing (or reading) all my other senses shut down. When I'm writing or reading, I can't hear anything, my sense of touch becomes diminished and whatever needs my body may have become a distant and ignorable burble.
Scary.
So the Catch 22 is this: If I want to write....I mean REALLY write in a focused, determined, professional and possibly money-gathering way, I cannot really teach.
But if I teach full time, I don't have time to write.
Because my life is not just about writing or teaching, of course. It is about taking care of the kids and Bob and making sure there is edible food and wearable clothes. It is about keeping the lines of communication and love open between family and friends. It is about keeping our cats happy and fed and supplied with clean litter boxes and shiny water bowls. It is about uncluttering the tables and undust-bunny-ing the floors and keeping my bike chain oiled and the drains cleared.
Life is more about what we HAVE to do, than about what we WANT to do. Sorry to break it to you.
So all this thinking about my own personal Catch 22 made me think about all the Catch 22's that exist. And boy are there a lot of them.
--Unemployed people who are looking for work find themselves in a Catch 22--the longer they are unemployed, the less employers want to hire them. And the less employers hire unemployed people, the longer these people are unemployed. Bah. Terrible.
--Working is one huge Catch 22. We work and work and work to earn money, holding in our heads that outdated goal that someday we'll be able to retire and then play a little. Only these days people often have to keep working into their 60's or 70's, and when they can finally retire and relax a little, their bodies are saying "Whoa there! I'm too tired to go windsurfing! Plant me in a chair buddy and hand me that remote!" Yet for most of us, if we try stepping back from work for awhile we end up not being able to afford the things we want to do anyway.
Now that I think if it, this is not so much a Catch 22 as it is terribly ironic. But I'll keep it in here because it's not fair.
--And why is it that when we go to an all-you-can-eat restaurant we get fuller faster than when we go to a regular restaurant? We go to "Hometown Buffet" and can barely get through 1 plate, but have to keep ordering appetizers and side dishes to fill up at any other average restaurant. Unfair I tell you.
--Cleaning cat litter boxes is one huge Catch 22 situation. I get up every morning and clean the litter boxes. This, logically, inspires the cats to visit the newly cleaned litter boxes. Which of course, means I have to clean them again. I love cats. But honestly, would it be THAT hard for them to make at least a half-hearted effort to potty train themselves? (I give you permission to substitute "cleaning cat litter boxes" with "doing dishes", "Making the bed", "sweeping" or "nagging the teenagers". Whatever applies to you).
--Reading a really good book has an essence of Catch 22 to it. I anticipate new fabulous books, buy them (in either paper or ebook formats), read them with the voracity of a very hungry person, and then become rather depressed because I want to unread it so I can read it fresh once again. But, of course, I cannot unread a really good book, so I must force myself to wander the aisles of bookstores, pages of internet offerings and libraries, seeking a new really good book.
(Huh. I think there is an important and poignant life analogy in there, but I have to go teach a class in a little bit, so I don't have time to explore the amazing depth of my own examples.)
--Money is the ultimate Catch 22. We humans have created a world in which we cannot live without these little handfuls of paper and metal. And we have simultaneously created a system in which obtaining these little handfuls of paper and metal ranges from the challenging to the impossible, depending on where, when and how specific people are living. And even more fun, the more money we manage to acquire, the more our lives become altered to depend on money to keep going. So in the end, we've got all these people roaming around with handfuls of paper and metal who have mistakenly made it their primary goal in life to get more handfuls of paper and metal. In the immortal words of Spock, "That is iillogical."
Sheesh.
And now I have to go teach, thereby providing the ultimate proof in my own personal Catch 22: I cannot keep writing because I'm going to be teaching. Two things I love to do, which I have yet to manage to coax into co-existing.
Hmph.
Until next time....
Y'know, I have these fairly frequent moments when the blog sits here and stews in its own virtual madness. And I feel thoroughly ashamed of myself.
Thoroughly.
And once the languishing blog starts heading towards a full month of not being updated, the guilt consumes me and I am drawn to doing at least a short update.
I mostly do this to assuage the all-consuming guilt.
But I also do it so I do not permanently lose the roughly, oh, 5 people who actually read this blog.
So here I am.
After some thought about why I can't seem to reliably put fingers to keyboard in any dependable manner, I realized my problem:
Catch 22.
I madly, madly love writing. I always have a notebook with me in which I jot down random story ideas (99% of which never see the light of day), scribble amusing or mind-boggling quotes I come across, or sketch out possible multi-million dollar ideas (like the one I had about combining Alka Seltzer and shampoo to make a self-scrubbing shampoo for lazy or very tired people).
But I am always trapped in this Catch 22--I also love teaching. And when you get right down to it, people pay me actual money to teach. People, so far, do not pay me actual money to write.
Which is a shame, since I could easily spend hours and hours and hours writing. There have been small isolated times in my adult life when I had a few non-teaching pockets of time. During these times, I got up at 7:30am, ate food, drank coffee, and was at the keyboard by 8:30am.
At that point for me, time stopped. It was just my brain pouring words through my fingers.
Typically during these times, the next time I managed to raise my eyes from the computer screen it was 6:30pm, I had to use the restroom rather badly, and Bob and the kids were standing around staring at me waiting for dinner to materialize.
It seems that when I am writing (or reading) all my other senses shut down. When I'm writing or reading, I can't hear anything, my sense of touch becomes diminished and whatever needs my body may have become a distant and ignorable burble.
Scary.
So the Catch 22 is this: If I want to write....I mean REALLY write in a focused, determined, professional and possibly money-gathering way, I cannot really teach.
But if I teach full time, I don't have time to write.
Because my life is not just about writing or teaching, of course. It is about taking care of the kids and Bob and making sure there is edible food and wearable clothes. It is about keeping the lines of communication and love open between family and friends. It is about keeping our cats happy and fed and supplied with clean litter boxes and shiny water bowls. It is about uncluttering the tables and undust-bunny-ing the floors and keeping my bike chain oiled and the drains cleared.
Life is more about what we HAVE to do, than about what we WANT to do. Sorry to break it to you.
So all this thinking about my own personal Catch 22 made me think about all the Catch 22's that exist. And boy are there a lot of them.
--Unemployed people who are looking for work find themselves in a Catch 22--the longer they are unemployed, the less employers want to hire them. And the less employers hire unemployed people, the longer these people are unemployed. Bah. Terrible.
--Working is one huge Catch 22. We work and work and work to earn money, holding in our heads that outdated goal that someday we'll be able to retire and then play a little. Only these days people often have to keep working into their 60's or 70's, and when they can finally retire and relax a little, their bodies are saying "Whoa there! I'm too tired to go windsurfing! Plant me in a chair buddy and hand me that remote!" Yet for most of us, if we try stepping back from work for awhile we end up not being able to afford the things we want to do anyway.
Now that I think if it, this is not so much a Catch 22 as it is terribly ironic. But I'll keep it in here because it's not fair.
--And why is it that when we go to an all-you-can-eat restaurant we get fuller faster than when we go to a regular restaurant? We go to "Hometown Buffet" and can barely get through 1 plate, but have to keep ordering appetizers and side dishes to fill up at any other average restaurant. Unfair I tell you.
--Cleaning cat litter boxes is one huge Catch 22 situation. I get up every morning and clean the litter boxes. This, logically, inspires the cats to visit the newly cleaned litter boxes. Which of course, means I have to clean them again. I love cats. But honestly, would it be THAT hard for them to make at least a half-hearted effort to potty train themselves? (I give you permission to substitute "cleaning cat litter boxes" with "doing dishes", "Making the bed", "sweeping" or "nagging the teenagers". Whatever applies to you).
--Reading a really good book has an essence of Catch 22 to it. I anticipate new fabulous books, buy them (in either paper or ebook formats), read them with the voracity of a very hungry person, and then become rather depressed because I want to unread it so I can read it fresh once again. But, of course, I cannot unread a really good book, so I must force myself to wander the aisles of bookstores, pages of internet offerings and libraries, seeking a new really good book.
(Huh. I think there is an important and poignant life analogy in there, but I have to go teach a class in a little bit, so I don't have time to explore the amazing depth of my own examples.)
--Money is the ultimate Catch 22. We humans have created a world in which we cannot live without these little handfuls of paper and metal. And we have simultaneously created a system in which obtaining these little handfuls of paper and metal ranges from the challenging to the impossible, depending on where, when and how specific people are living. And even more fun, the more money we manage to acquire, the more our lives become altered to depend on money to keep going. So in the end, we've got all these people roaming around with handfuls of paper and metal who have mistakenly made it their primary goal in life to get more handfuls of paper and metal. In the immortal words of Spock, "That is iillogical."
Sheesh.
And now I have to go teach, thereby providing the ultimate proof in my own personal Catch 22: I cannot keep writing because I'm going to be teaching. Two things I love to do, which I have yet to manage to coax into co-existing.
Hmph.
Until next time....
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