Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Stay positive. Apply “Squirrel!” mentality (otherwise known as Attention Deficit Oooh, Shiny!) to thoughts of ‘I’m lesser.’ And in the words of Logician Jahana Shaharan ar-Drindi of Orocno, “Stop emoting and analyze!” Figure out what I’m addicted to, and why, then set up mental guards to shift the stimulus (thank you, Mark! That was one of the pieces I was missing).
Monday I caught up on household chores – felt good not to have them hanging over my head any more. When I did my reads I held in the back of my awareness the memory of flying from when I went parasailing in Catalina – I actually laughed with delight through the words I was speaking. No TV, limited iPad and computer (no computer anyway – it won’t boot up properly again. Which also means I’m cut off from my pictures); I used a notebook to scribble my writings in so I’d have the rough draft handy and could just type the words in quick when I turned on the device.
Attending the funeral of a long-time family friend (to which I was nearly late), I found myself wondering why I do this kind of thing to myself – I’d fallen back to sleep after my alarm went off and I’d done my first read of Greatest Salesman and woke up just barely in time to have my shower and drive to the church. I got there before the service – by about three minutes. (Beautiful ceremony, by the way, but I kept wondering why religions encourage people to look outward to a Source greater than they, rather than inward to a Source greater than yet part of themselves…)
But. I’m addicted to the peptides I produce when I think about ‘sleeping in’ even when I don’t need to physically, and apparently I’m also addicted to rushing, rushing, rushing. Reminds me of a poem from Black Beauty that the character Jerry Barker would sing –
“If in the morning you throw minutes away,
You can’t pick them up in the course of a day.
You may hurry and scurry and flurry and worry,
But you’ve lost them forever, forever and aye.”
What to replace those two stimuli with? Haven’t decided yet.
I was twitchy about the no TV thing. I didn’t think I would be. After last week I’d already decided to do what we were going to get told to do on Sunday, so why the craving?
(Because it’s a form of mental dissipation that releases peptides I’m addicted to. What can I substitute…? Constructive imagination for new novels, that’s what. Keep a pen and notepad handy, scribble outlines – still need an alternate main character and beginning for Guardian’s Genesis: The First Guardian.)
So I didn’t yield to it – point number 2 to celebrate – not even when Jerry got home and immediately turned on his video game and then later the Monday Night Football. Instead I dug out an old workout DVD, loaded it into my laptop and put some time into exercise. (That might be pushing at The Rules a little bit – but I wasn’t doing it for entertainment.)
I also did my requisite 2,300 words for NaNoWriMo.
For those who aren’t familiar, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. A group of friends back in the nineties challenged each other to write 50,000 words in 30 days; it’s grown through the years from that core group to include thousands of people worldwide, all busily writing away during the month of November. And it has to be either a completely new novel, or you have to add 50,000 words to an existing one.
You can write an entire book in 50,000 words, did you know that? The Great Gatsby was 47,094; Old Yeller, 35,968; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was only 30, 644! I’m behind this year – first the cruise, then the lazy fit – I didn’t actually start writing until the 12th. But as of last night I have 20, 982 words and the story is moving along.
I was also doing a lot of thinking around the idea of ‘Everyone has exactly as much faith as everyone else.” Where am I applying mine? To believing in faith, or believing in doubt?
Tuesday I made more recordings to play when I’m at the gym walking the treadmill, alternating Master Key reads with my DMP/PPN/POA recording – that felt good, too. Then I went to the gym and walked my three miles, and wonder of wonders, I didn’t feel that urge to cut my exercise short at the end of the first mile – that was when the music-based recording of my new reality cut in, and I found the pace of the treadmill (3.5 mph) was just too slow. I got my requisite writings done and posted on my website and blog, and they were decent as far as quality goes.
Today – Easier to get up this morning. I have two blog posts done. I’ve rewritten my Movie Trailer card ’cause I found out when making the recordings that the sentences aren’t quite right, and because I was out of lines on the WPOA side. I’ll have lunch, do my second reads, and go to the gym for my walk. Then write a post for my other blog (1 hour on the timer!), and after that I’ll be free to saran-wrap the windows for the winter and write my 2,300 words for NaNo… might see if I can push it to 4,000, since Jerry’ll be home by then and he’ll want to play his video game.
(I’m glad we put the door back on the room that is my office; shutting out the cats was regrettable but necessary, as they never did understand why they shouldn’t park themselves on my keyboard and stare at me until I petted them. The door also blocks out most of the sound from the living room. I actually work better to silence; I can hear my own thoughts and imagination better that way. I don’t play music when I’m writing, or in the car when I’m driving, either; I find it distracting and sometimes a bit irritating.)
But this week is a good week.