The word of the week
is frippery.
Feb 2 - Grounded
I got a round of applause today, unexpectedly!
It wasn't at work, though I could have used one: it was
an extremely busy day with the only downtime on the few minutes of my breaks /
lunches, as it was the first of the month and we were inundated with callers. I
don't think I've spoken continuously that long for quite some time.
But back to the applause: it was for a piece I'd written!
Last week at the freewriting group meeting, my story about a
murder in an apple pie factory was well received, enough so that several people
at tonight's meeting who were also there last week asked me to read it again. I
happily obliged and when I was done, the entire group applauded me, which was a
fantastic feeling, I have to tell you - I'm smiling all over again as I write
this. More than a few people asked me to expand the story and I'm planning to
do so this spring, to see where it takes me; I'll update you all here once a
short draft is ready. Here’s a quick concept I did:
One of our regulars even commented afterwards that he thought
it was impressive that I had managed to write such a solid, entertaining and cohesive
story in less than 10 minutes. I don't think my Muse has stopped dancing in
glee since.
Today is also Groundhog Day and I made time after getting home
for my writing group to watch my favorite film, as I do every year at this
time. No matter how many times I see it, I get something new out of the
experience and that's something rare in today's world, in any medium.
Feb
3 – Round The Clock
Another day off, another 12 hours of busy!
It's a good thing that I only have these EDO’s once every two
weeks or I'd be exhausted. Just kidding: I'm really grateful to be able to have
a day off during the week that's completely paid for by my job, when you look
at it.
I used the morning to pick up my Western Digital Dual-Drive from
the courier. I had hoped it was going to be everything I needed to bring my laptop up to
speed in terms of storage and flexibility, but it wasn't to be. Turns out I hadn't done my research carefully enough and it was 2.5mm too tall to fit in my slim laptop's drive bay - dang. So back to the online store it goes... lesson learned.
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| Alas, it wasn't meant to be, beautiful... |
Then I was off to my first session with an RMT in quite some
time, to get my right leg looked at. The running injury from 2013 hasn’t gone
away and she worked diligently to determine the extent of my intermittent pain
and discomfort. The initial diagnosis? A major tendon in my right leg is too
tight and is pulling the other muscles out of alignment, which is consistent
with my own thoughts and what I've described to her. It will take a few more
sessions but I'm already looking at things differently at how I move around to relieve the tension.
Still slightly tender but feeling good about how things went,
I headed out for dinner with a couple of friends over at John's Place. The
conversation was great and amusingly turned towards my love life, which ended
up with my friends looking over a few of my old dating profiles to offer their
thoughts. It was definitely one of the more unusual - yet delightful - dinners I've had with friends
but also one of the most revealing and by the end of the evening I had a useful
store of advice to apply.
One thing I didn't know: Victoria BC has an entry in the urban
dictionary entitled ‘Chicktoria’ that references a 2011 Statistics Canada
report on Victoria. According to the data, there are 65,000 single adult
females in Victoria but only 50,000 single adult males, resulting in an
imbalance towards the female side of things. Quite a surprise to me, to be
honest.
I'd say the stats are in my favor, wouldn't you?
Feb 4 – Deep Breath?
What the heck was I going to write about today?
You may not believe it, but I do come up with a
fair number of topics that I consider covering week to week in my blog. Some of
them occur to me at the last minute, while others pop into my head at various
times during my day. I consider all of them and pick the ones that I find most
interesting, but sometimes a few of those go missing along the way.
Such as today's.
Written down in my Evernote scratchpad are two
words: Deep Breath. I've no idea why these occurred to me on February 4 as a
possible topic, though I have them written down as such. Perhaps I meant for
them to be reflective, or to have to do with my sense of smell; both of those
seem fairly plausible, but I didn't end up adding any notes to the two words
after they appeared. My train of thought hit a bump and derailed, I suppose:
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| Words failed them |
I can say for certain that I started developing a huge migraine today, but I managed to stave off its effects with the timely
application of medication. The barometric pressure dropped like a rock this
afternoon with the onset of rain forecast for this weekend and I was glad that
I was able to sense it coming in time to avoid severe discomfort; it's been a
while since that last happened.
Perhaps it was due in part to the derailment in my
head?
Feb 5 – It’s My Idea, isn’t it?
Am I original?
I mean that in terms of my work, of my writing, my
creative output. I worry that my subconscious is assembling things that I've
seen out of such little pieces that I won't recognize where they all come from
until suddenly it's too late: I've created something that isn't original but rather assembled
from a myriad of sources I wasn't aware of at the time of creation.
That's the main reason why I haven't been reading
much in the last few years. I tell people that it's because "my brain filled up"
and I that needed to output instead of input, but really all I've been doing is
avoiding unintentional imitation in order to fully own my creative process.
Apparently that's a silly thing to do, as I
discovered today when reading a letter Mark Twain wrote to Helen Keller on
the very topic. In the article, the famously creative Twain writes:
For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.
Reading that today, I was struck by how much my
subconscious worry has ruled my leisure time since I started writing my novels
back in early 2012. As much as I want to be original, I realized today that
without crediting my influences, I would only be foundering around in the dark
creatively and wondering where I was coming from. Learning that Mark Twain, one
of my earliest literary influences, had such eloquent things to say on the
subject, has made me feel far less fretful about where my ideas may or may not come
from.
With that thought, I think I'll pick up a few
books I've been meaning to get to later on this month and see where they lead me.
Feb 6 – SSD Success!
Sometimes, patience pays off - literally.
Maybe that's not quite correct… sometimes,
patience will save you money, if you're a smart shopper. You can guess where
I'm going with this: I picked up a great deal today on a new SSD for 50% off on
Amazon.ca. That's really incredible timing, when you think about it, seeing as
my purchased last week didn't work out – cool, when that sort of thing happens
and goes to show you that you shouldn't stress out when it does as something
better may come along.
What I found this week( and arrived yesterday, perfect timing again! )was a Crucial M500SSD, one of the top-rated SSD drives out there on the market right now. I paid
a little over $100 for it( plus taxes and with free shipping, to boot )to
replace my laptop’s drive… and boy, did THAT need upgrading! Apart from the
meager storage space, it turns out the Samsung SSD was a little… underpowered.
As in, a LOT – take a gander at the benchmarks I ran comparing the two drives:
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| New one on the left... |
The improved score made my head spin, as did the
increased speed which was immediately apparent. What really boggles my brain
was that parts of the test showed the new drive was up to 40 times faster in
certain operations, as you can see in the screenshot above.
In practical terms, it means my laptop feels like
a new machine and that's really amazing for the little at I spent overall. My
laptop can now pretty much do anything that my desktop can without any
compromises( excluding games, but that's
fine by me: I bought it primarily to write )and will allow me to work
pretty much anywhere as needed without weighing me down too much. I've dreamed
of having a piece of hardware like this for decades and finally I do, with the
icing on the cake being that I've not paid through the nose for it by being
patient in my purchases.
And man,
is that new SSD drive fast.
Feb 7 – Weekend, at last!
Life is getting busier for me, but not in a bad
way.
Actually, I should say that my life is opening up
in some ways: the most immediately apparent is how my weekends have been freed
up with only 1 job to my name - permanently. Most of my weeknights are free now as well, unless I fill them with social
engagements and every other Monday is spoken for by my writing group. Not bad, when I look at it.
It's an odd feeling, this newfound freedom, but I
like it.
Today was a good example: everything I did was by
my choice and not constrained by having to fit things around a second job. I
breakfasted leisurely, picked up my bike from the shop, completed a whole bunch of things
around the house that had been languishing and generally enjoyed my day as I
pleased. There were a few moments where I stopped to look around and thought “My
day is more open than spoken for and I'm enjoying the flexibility.”
What I mean by that, I think, is that I could just
put things aside if I wanted to and go for a walk. Or read. Or nap, or do any of
100 other things, rather than trying to cram just the necessary tasks into the waking
time I had before or after having to work today.
Not counting my long stretch of unemployment in 2012,
the last time I saw my weekends this completely open, I was in grade school.
The entire time since then, a ‘weekend off’ has always been that: something
unusual that I tried not to take for granted as it was a rarity.
Now, every one of my weekends for the foreseeable
future is my own to do with as I see fit, and I love how that makes me feel.
Feb 8 – “Spring” already?
Today was a lovely day, in several senses of the
word.
Not that anything exceptionally remarkable
happened, but precisely because of that. For those of you who woke to the
knowledge that today was yours and yours alone, you'll know what I'm talking
about. I accomplished a lot today in terms of headspace and writing and for
those two things alone, I'm grateful that I had the day off; may more of them be
as carefree as today.
There was also a whiff of spring in the air: the
clouds rolled back and a glimmer of sunshine greeted the city for a few hours
around noon. With the green grass and fair numbers of people wandering around
with jackets unzipped, it could easily have been sometime in April as I looked
out my window. Especially since the trees seem to have been fooled as to which
season it is here at the moment:
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| View St lived up to its name this week! |
While writing this afternoon with the apartment windows
braced open to admit a fresh breeze, I pause now and then to think about my
situation as it is now. Just a little, but enough to be grateful for what I
have managed to achieve: setting myself up to where the most stressful part in
my life is wondering if I've written anything good on that particular day.
That's a wonderful place to be.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to
writing this week's blog.
... and that's the blog for this week. A whole lot of rain and grey skies, but really nothing unexpected. A whole lot of positives for the week, which I'm happy to have mentioned above. This spring looks to be a MOST positive one, in which I'll work, write and repeat until I'm ready to start my third novel... I can hardly wait!
