Making every sheet count...

If you don't remember a particular day, does that mean it wasn't well spent? What did I do last week? What was I doing one year ago today? Where did I spend my 48th birthday? (you'd think that one would be easy, but I had to stop and think about it for a second or two).

It's important to me - to know that the hour I spent watching the birds outside my window was a keeper, or the time I spent in a cafe in Italy - or for that matter, in Italy at all. If I care enough to write it down, it must have meant something. I'm thinking lately about the tree in the forest - the one that falls, but no one was there to hear, so did it make a sound? (or something along those lines - I suck at telling jokes too).

If a moment is written down, does that mean it was well spent? Conversely, if it isn't, was it squandered away - forgettable? I have journals and notebooks going back to 1996 - and torn pieces of paper, napkins, paper bags, all manner of wrapping paper, envelopes going back further - filled with expenditures of time. Don't ask me about the years before 28 (except I do remember the day I got drunk at a church party and made an absolute ass out of myself by calling the hostess, a good Christian woman, a whore - because my Eye-Candy, Robert, preferred her - why can't I forget that!) Other than that (and a few others too humiliating to leave my lips), I hope I've made wise investments.

I take writing classes from time to time. I'm always amazed at what comes out of the timed free writing exercises - some stuff is, I dare say - pretty good (as starting points go). So, some of my exercises, cleaned up, might show up in here.

What this isn't is a theme blog - sorry. What can I say - I meander far too much for that. I start here, and might end up quite over there. Maybe this is why I need to write things down. It goes something like this: I get up to get new paper to feed the printer (because I work from home now) and somehow manage to get side tracked by the chirping just outside my kitchen window. Before I know it, I've been at the window far too long - longer than a person who has no one to check in with has a right to - watching those little dinosaurs jump around, jockeying for first dibs at the seeds I put out earlier that morning, inventing little bird gossip and rumors -- what else can all the chirping be?
"Hey, sparrow, down the street, a lady is dishing out premium hulled sunflower seeds!"

"Yeah, I heard. Mocking bird is main-lining the stuff. Me? Nah. I know Window Lady puts out the boring generic backyard seeds, but I'm staying right here - don't want to hurt Window Lady's feelings."

"You NUTS!? (this is that long insistent chirp I always hear but can't see who makes it - accent on the second word - and sharp!) I'm going NOW"

"I know, I know, I should too, but a sparrow's gotta do what a sparrow's gotta do -I'mloyal that way." (sparrows speak in full sentences, they're constantly talking to each other)

"yeah, I know about your kind sparrow. but I'm a dove, I spell loyalty - but the seeds are better over yonder." (two doves, I'm told they mate for life, have been coming to feed in my yard since the beginning).

I'm convinced the doves 'get' me.

Stuff like this is bound to happen. I'm the sort who watches the dryer spin at the laundromat. I have a number of books that have found new homes in my car because they were going to keep me busy reading while my clothes got done - haven't read a single one - there is much more drama happening in the dryer. I watch water in pots come to a boil - and I'm here to tell you that everything you ever heard about a watched pot never boiling...it's all lies; it does boil. I watch the microwave turntable - there is something so utterly pleasing about these activities. It's natural that I would be distracted by what is going on out side my window.

Discipline. I might write about the discipline necessary to work from home. It's hard! It's damn hard to find the inner strength to reign in my meandering self from all the important things I could be doing. Unfortunately, the pity factor is low - few people (only those who either work from home, or formerly worked from home) understand the stress choice brings - how truly difficult it is to be able to break away from a project whenever you want. The risk is you may not come back to it for a while...and that can be dangerous. I never had that problem when I had to check into an office -- and be there all day and take lunch when my clients stopped walking in - sometimes unannounced, as anyone whose done crisis intervention and direct services knows.

When I shared this one day with a woman I thought would understand, she, coldly, said "when you've starved long enough, you'll learn the discipline," almost as if she wanted me to starve, to know the need the absence of discipline brings. Whoa, little miss bitter! Someone been dipping too much into the daydreaming jar, or spending too much time at the window?

Transitions, reinventions, musings, writing exercises, fears, desires, pleasures - it might all show up. I am too many things in any given day - and I want to capture all that. Hope that doesn't sound pompous or self righteous. But I think we all wear too many hats in our lives to expect to wear only one when we come to the page. I suppose there is one I'd like to claim - Writer. Now, there's a novel idea. But still have some dues to pay before I can claim that one.

Mostly, I want to see that I have been spending my time well - or just know what I was doing on any given week.

So, anyway, back to the sound of silent falling trees...and my notebooks. I want to make every single sheet, like every single moment (come on, be practical) count. So, starting today, I'll be here at least once a week. And who knows...I might even write something worthwhile...even funny...nah..that was stupid and probably won't ever happen.

A need to write things down...that's where most beginnings start anyway.

Introduction to Pad Well Spent

Do You know how often I wonder whether I have spent a day well? I'm sure you wonder too - admit it, you do. So, I've come up with this little bit of space - a space to remind myself of how I've been spending my time. A way of showing my spending habits - did I get something for that minute I just spent, for that day - did I get any change back? Was it a good investment? Stuff like that. The older I get, the more important it becomes to me to know that I have been spending my time well.

My latest wake-up utterance is - "okay, this is a Tuesday you won't get back - spend it well," and I get to the details of my day. Now, I have a place to write them. It may be silliness - it may be something really important, like today. I saw the mating dance of a common everyday sparrow in my backyard. Forty-nine years I've watched sparrows, forty-nine years I've only noticed that they are a common brown and sing a not so pretty song. But today, I saw one trying to win the affections of a sprite little sparrow (who was entirely more interested in the seeds I'd just put out) trying his best hip-hop sparrow dance - chest out, hop, hop, hop left - then pause - hop, hop, hop right - shake feathers - hop, hop, hop, left - then pause - hop, hop, hop right and so on and so on. She didn't care. Her eyes were on the prize - the seeds.

This scene, taking place just three feet in front of me, reminded me of a boy in a movie, I believe it was The Naked Prey. A young aboriginine boy tries his best to win the affection of a young English or American girl who, for some strange reason I can't recall, is in Africa and is lost and alone. There's a young African boy, also lost, trying to get back to his village - but he is short of becoming a man - one of the things he must do to become a man, is win over a woman. She's in a hut. He comes across the hut - finds her sleeping; frightens her to see him when she wakes up; I think for a minute they were okay with each other until he decides, this is the woman he wants - this is the one he will win over as his wife before he can go back home. She doesn't know that, for him, failure to win her over is to die.

The young boy starts - for days he tries. She is frightened of all his antics - thinking he is actually practicing some ritual to maybe kill her later. He tries and realizes finally that he cannot win her. All his prancing, puffing, coloring his face failed to win her over. The young girl realizes that he has stopped finally. Exhausted, and happy to still be alive, she sees her opportunity to make a run for it. She bolts out of the safety of the hut she'd been hiding in. As she turns a corner she finds the boy -- dead; he'd hung himself. Failure was not an option for him. He couldn't return to his village a man - without a woman. In that instant she realizes - and the look of crushing guilt over not having understood (at least, maybe I wanted her to feel guilt.) She runs but I never forgot that image.

And so I watch the little bird, he falters - the seeds I put out are too delicious to ignore any longer. He stops his puffing his wings for a nano second, takes some seeds - and prances about for a bit longer. Girl sparrow just wants the seeds (Hagen Seed?) He can't spend anymore time here - he takes off. I watch- a part of me wants to go look around the bushes, make sure there's no little hung bird, or kamakazi flight path....
No, no such thing - all's good. I go back to my coffee. The sparrows they keep eating the seeds. It was an hour of my morning well spent.

and the coffee, it was good.