Thinking About Writing

I'm thinking about writing again. I think about it all the time. I make up stories in my head practically every day. I know characters for these stories intimately. So why don't I put pen to paper (or hands to keyboard as it were) and give them life? I don't have an answer for that. Maybe I get bored easily. Maybe I'm too critical of myself. Maybe I don't have the time.

Hm. Of those three maybes, I think being critical of myself is probably the main reason. But getting bored easily is also a big one for me. I'll come up with something I think is a good idea and think about it some more until I find the flaw in the plot. By then, I'm done. No need to go on. NaNoWriMo is not my friend for this very reason.

How in the world can I get past this? If anyone reads this and has any ideas, let me know.

I Don't Get it

So here's the thing: I work in retail. I have for my entire adult life. I actually enjoy it. Really. Obviously, there have been times when I have hated retail but that was mostly during my previous job. Let's be honest on that one, it was rarely the customers or the job that got me down, it was the corporate offices and the management of the store that made me miserable. I have a job now that I enjoy and the company is great as is the manager. But what I don't get is why people think its okay to walk into a store and be an asshole.

I can count on one hand how many times I've had to be a bitch in a retail moment. Once, the girl at McDonald's couldn't get my debit card to work and told me it was declined for insufficient funds. That one worried me for a moment until she tried a second card and had the same results. I not so very nicely told her it wasn't the cards that were insufficient it was her. Another time, I bought a book at a store that was going out of business. I very nicely asked the cashier not to put a mark on one item out of the three because I was giving it to my husband. She wasn't very nice in her response which was something to the effect of, "I have to, dumbass. Do you want it or not?" (Dumbass was obviously implied in tone and not actually said aloud.) I replied that I did and paid for it. When she was finished putting a black line through the UPC, I stepped to the side, licked my thumb and wiped the offending black mark off in her face.

I'm sure the people watching me thought I was the bitch in the situation. And maybe my attitude was uncalled for but I have been on the receiving end of good customers and bad customers for long enough to know when a request of mine is out of line. Here's the thing, when you go out in public treat the people who are there to help you with a little common courtesy.  We don't have to be best friends but at least say please and thank you and keep that comment you think is going to cut me to the quick to yourself. I don't make policy, I don't set prices, and I am not the help. I don't care what happened to you before you came into my store. All I know is that I didn't do it.

There's no solution obviously. People will be assholes for any reason they choose. Its life. As long as I work in retail, I will have to deal with it. Some days I may be able to laugh it off and others days it'll make my blood boil. I could wish that everyone would have to work retail for a year of their life. Maybe then, they might have an understanding of the pure shit retail staff have to go through. (A Christmas season and slow down would have to be mandatory to understand the crush of the holidays and the fight for hours just to have some money.) Maybe if everyone did that, there would be less jerks but I doubt it. People will still be assholes if it suits them. But still, I just don't get it.

Daylight Savings is kicking my ass.

This isn't going to be a long post. Nor is it going to be a history lesson about daylight savings. I could care less about why they started doing it. What I care about is the fact that I have to suffer through it in the spring. I just can't get used to it. My internal clock won't reset this year and I find myself surfing the internet at midnight knowing full well I have to be awake at 6am. Dinner has moved from between 6:30 to 7:30pm and that messes with bedtimes for kids. I've been tired all week and eaten too late. I feel terrible. Going to bed early would solve my problem but I know I will just lay there thinking about how I am not tired. So, just like the blog post says, Daylight Savings is truly kicking my ass.

Pride and Embarrassment

All right. I confess. I used to write a soap opera. Okay, I've written three in total. The first one I wrote in junior high. I started it because my sister was doing it and she wouldn't let me read hers. The second I wrote in high school and was called "Where There's a Will." I loved that one. I still have it somewhere in my garage after all these years in the same blue binder I used for catechism. The most recent one was called "Secret Horizons" and was written about 2001. I loved that thing. I wrote on it every day for nearly two years. But life happened and I stopped writing it.

I mention this because the whole soap opera writing thing came up in conversation with a co-worker today. At lunch, I found its binder and returned to work with it, laying it on the co-worker's desk. I am immensely proud and ashamed of it at the same time. It is a big binder, one of those huge ones, and it is full. There were at least 125 "episodes" with four to five scenes apiece. Printed out, each episode was approximately five pages long single spaced. That makes my soap opera at least 625 pages long!

I am so proud of the work and dedication I put into it but I am so embarrassed by the genre. Its a soap opera! Its not even a cool genre. Its all over the top melodrama and evil twins. I've promised my co-worker she can read it but I'm having second thoughts. Letting people who don't know me read it is one thing but someone I know? How mortifying. And yet, maybe letting her read it will push me into rewriting it into something a little less corny. Or, I'll conveniently forget I promised and thus avoid any painful embarrassment.

Regardless, I loved writing it and still think about some of the main characters to this day. and for the record, there were no evil twins.

Why am I doing this?

That is a very good question and one that doesn't have an easy answer for me. As a child, I generally had a diary or notebook for writing. When I graduated from high school and found myself fairly alone and going through a rough time in college, I started journaling. I stopped writing my every inner thought and paranoia when I married. It seemed childish somehow. While cleaning my garage recently, I rediscovered those journals. My first and only thought about them was that I needed to get rid of them. There were two reasons. One, they were damaged by a long ago flood of our garage and covered in mold. Two, they were downright embarrassing!

 

After looking through one or two, I discovered that my 22 year old self was a whiner who was waiting for something to happen. The predominant thing I was waiting for? Love. I wanted to love someone and be loved in return. Well, I found it and fortunately still have it. I count myself lucky that I have my family. They drive me nuts at times, but don't all families?

 

So here it is, some 15ish years later and the Internet has taken over our world. It's possible to journal and put your thoughts into the world for others to read. Which begs the question, why would you do that? I don't have an answer for that. I think, for me, I just want to express an opinion occasionally. I don't care if anyone reads it (or maybe I do and that's why this blog is happening.) More than anything, I want to write again and I don't want to be embarrassed by what I've written. I'm older and less whiny. Also, some of what I say might be worth reading to someone, like my daughters in a couple of years.

 

Not an easy answer or a very good one, but there it is. And those old journals? In the landfill and gone forever thank goodness.

and death i think is no parenthesis

ee cummings