Charles Dickens

sorry, not sorry

I sit at my laptop, looking out the window — a blank stare.

No, not blank. There’s a lot going on inside the walls behind my glasses. There’s always a lot going on there.

I think too much.

I watched a movie last night. In it, Reese Witherspoon delivers a spot-on line. “You know what the difference is between men and women? Men just do. They decide what they want to do, and they just do it. Women always have to think about the consequences.”

Like today. After days of rain, it’s finally beautiful outside. I’ll be out on my bike soon, but even then, where is my mind?

With the victims of Parkside, with the gun war, with social media and online identity. With what it takes — what it really takes — to become a writer. (Do you need a degree? Dickens didn’t.) With passion versus practicality. With “forge ahead” versus “let it flow.” With “be yourself” versus “be what others want from you.” With finances. With family. With faith versus real-world experience. With famine versus plenty . . .

With race, privilege, power, poverty, circumstance, personal responsibility, finances, friendship, loneliness, thankfulness, climate change, litter, recycling, consumerism, capitalism, love, hate, tradition, change, aging . . .

Did I mention that I think too much?

I’m tired of being sorry.

Sorry, I’m not sorry.

blessed

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The holidays are a wonderful time. Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate’s life for me. Oh, wait. I guess that was supposed to be Ho-ho-ho! — Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

Or was it?

Something that’s always bothered me about the holidays is — no, not the materialism (although that’s part of it) — the focus on self. When I was a copy writer in Chattanooga, I wrote countless articles on depression around the holidays. The media paints Christmas and New Years out to be such a wonderful time of year, but what if it isn’t? What if you’re single and alone? What if your family lives a long way? What if a loved one just died, or money is really, really tight? It’s a well-known fact that shop-lifting rates go up around the holidays.

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A little girl begging at Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Around my home, Christmas cards from friends always come rolling in around the holidays. Pictures with smiling faces and new babies and fall colors and fancy scarves beam from the refrigerator door. Sayings like “Blessed!” and “Wishing you and yours happiness throughout the holidays and the coming year” jump out at innocent passersby . . . And, as I look at these clean, painted faces, I wonder: Do they even know? Do they know how blessed they really are? Really? Continue reading →

nanonano

While everyone else in the blogosphere is concerned with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), inexperienced bloggers like me just want write. We nonconformists recognize that, even if we could pump out 50,000 words in 30 days, most of those words would suck. Not to mention we have other lives. I have not yet achieved my dream of being able to sit at my computer all day with nothing else on my plate but to write, write, write.

Maybe someday.

Not that I’m opposed to NaNoWriMo. I think it’s a great idea: Write for a cause. Work cooperatively. World peace. All that.

It’s just . . .

Personally, I’d rather work on attainable goals. Take the GRE, figure out grad school, freelance (I’ve got my first freelance article coming out this week!), exercise, write whatever I want whenever I want. I’ll bet you have responsibilities, too. Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Dickens never wrote for NaNoWriMo? How about Shakespeare? Tolkien? Austen? Homer?

That’s what I thought.

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