Obligation

I started to talk about having a good day today--I did, mainly because the back is much better--but then I reconsidered because I have something on my mind.

From time to time, I find myself wondering what having a talent asks of you. At the risk of sounding arrogant or vain, I am going to say I have talent as a writer. This is a gift, a thing given to me--whether it comes from God or a happy genetic accident doesn't really matter, since it's not something I made.

All I can do is develop it. That's actually the thing that matters, the work that goes into developing the gift. There's no question in my mind about that and if I take any pride in anything to do with my writing, it's that: the work I've put into it.

But sometimes I wonder if I work hard enough, and sometimes, when I'm considering my work ethic (or lack thereof), I wonder whether or not I have an obligation to develop my talent and do something with it.

What if I don't want to? Doesn't that waste it? And isn't that a shame, and kind of a slap to someone who has the desire but not the gift? I sometimes feel as if it is, generally when I'm feeling unproductive and as if producing something is an effort akin to carving Mt. Everest to rubble with a spoon. I feel as if I'm squandering a fortune I've been given.

Just now it occurred to me to try this from another angle.

I wish I could sing. Man, do I wish I could sing. My great-grandfather sang opera and (according to family legend) could have been a star if he hadn't loved the bottle so much. My grandfather inherited some of his talent--to this day, "Ave Maria" makes me think of him. My dad could sing.

Me? As far as I'm concerned, key is what I use to open my door and pitch is what Curt Schilling does. The only music I make is with language...but I wish I could open my mouth and sing beautifully.

So let me imagine a woman who can sing, who loves to sing, but who doesn't--for whatever reason--want to develop her voice into a professional instrument. She sings to give herself pleasure, and that's the end of it. There are other things in her life that matter to her that she's not willing to trade in order to sing professionally.

Do I resent her because she's squandering a gift I wish I had? No. It's hers, not mine, and she's getting pleasure out of it, and maybe that's all that matters. (I'm sure the people who hear her get pleasure out of it.)

Or lets say she does sing professionally, but in little local clubs, on the weekend. Is she squandering her gift? No. She's doing what's right for her.

I think I fret about this with the part of me who thinks imagining isn't working, who believes people who say writers write, and chide people for thinking about writing instead of actually writing. I believe those people because I think there's some truth in what they say, and I know I sometimes put off writing because it's been so long that I get daunted.

The thing is, I have to recognize how I think and work. I focus on things, one thing at a time, and if I'm not focusing on my writing because I'm focusing on something else that has a legitimate claim on my time, then that's the way it is, because that's the way I am.

The other thing is that I know I'll be wrestling with this until I die. This isn't something that gets solved; it's just something I learn to live with.

Weary

All I have to say tonight is that I'm tired of my back hurting.

I recognize that in the world of chronic pain--and compared to some things my friends are going through--this is very small potatoes indeed. Seen from a certain perspective, I'm being a whiny baby.

But I can't sit at a computer for any length of time, and a good portion of what I need to do at work involves sitting at a computer. If I'm not sitting at my computer, I'm standing in my cube, waiting for the day to go by.

It makes the day very long. That makes me cranky.

I'm tired of being cranky.

All I can do is wait this out, and it really is getting better. It's just that what I have to do to get it better frustrates me. I don't generally think of myself as an active person, or one who relies completely on her mobility, but then I bump up against something like this that keeps me from getting things done and it makes me realize how active I really am.

Rabbi Gellman, who writes a column for Newsweek says that we're all temporarily abled; basically, one way or another, we'll lose our abilities over time. When I go through something like this with my back, I think about that...and it makes me more determined than ever to hold onto my mobility for as long as I can.

In the meantime, I will try to cultivate patience and to whine just a little less.

Better-er

Well, today the back is better-er. I took something to help with the muscle spasms, and I took NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), and I tried to keep my butt out of my chair, since sitting is one thing that makes my back stiffen up and get hurtful.

There has been much improvement, which means much joy in my neck of the woods.

Under ordinary circumstances, tomorrow morning would be a workout morning, but that ain't happening. I'll go in on Saturday when I have my usual appointment with my trainer--I have every confidence she'll help figure out things I can do that won't hurt me even more, and might even make me better. (This will be A Good Thing, since I'm pretty sure working out on Tuesday exacerbated whatever it was that was going on back there.)

My friend K. is telling me to get my hip checked out. I suppose I ought to; I forget to mention it when I have my checkup. I have a muscle by my shoulderblade that'll spasm if you press on it; before I used to work out, it would hurt every now and again. That went on for years--years--before I mentioned it to my doctor.

I kept forgetting.

Other than that, things are good. No writing, nor even thinking about it, but I read something in Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History that helped me understand something about the world of my fantasy--that every society/people has a myth about its origins that has some connection to historical fact, but is not historical fact. This was mentioned in a very non-judgmental, "This is what human beings do" kind of way...and it helped me see how my people, my society, would see the origins of their world in that kind of mythic, heroic, "That was a time when giants walked the earth" kind of way. I know the truth in my head, so it was kind of hard--until this particular moment of reading--to understand emotionally how my characters would see it differently.

But now I do understand.

That's really the best part of writing this particular story: everything I read, however unrelated it may seem (a history of (almost entirely 20th century) Vietnam?), can have bearing on what I'm doing.

Which pleases my perpetually digging curiosity no end...

Owie

I'm not sure that's how you spell it, but I have an owie--something that makes me go "Ow!" (Actually, it makes me go "Ow ow ow ow ow!" but still...)

Every 18 to 24 months, I hurt my lower back. It gets all stiff and it makes me aware of how much twisting I do (because it hurts every time I twist). It's all stupid stuff, a bunch of accumulated little insults and disses to my very sensitive little back (which is less sensitive since I strengthened my abs and my back, but I guess it can still say "enough!" if I'm unkind).

So I haven't much to say tonight, except "Ow ow ow ow ow!" and "I'm going to bed..." (Where I will sleep on my back with my knees raised, because that always helps.)

Grrrrr

Every time I sat down to post this weekend, the sky cracked: big rolling thunder-boomers. Trees came down in my city, flung down by the wind.

Not good weather to be on-line. So I wasn't.

And tonight I'm cranky. Just grumpy and irritable. It's partly that I'm tired. It's partly that I took a walk today, which annoyed my hip, so it's been grumbling (aka hurting) all evening. And it's partly that stuff I've been avoiding is bubbling up to the surface, and I have to face it because it won't go away any more.

Sigh.

The good news about that is that, whether or not I recognized it, the stuff has been working on me. If I can sort through it and put into some kind of order, internally, it won't be as troublesome. I'll still have a monster in my cellar, but it'll be the size of a groundhog, not the size of a mastodon. And I'll know how to manage it.

But until then, I'm grumpy and cranky and feeling very splintery.

Where was I?

Yep, I disappeared.

Fell into a rabbit hole.

Well, actually, I got sick and slept for 17 hours. Which I never do. I think I mentioned that before, the not-sleeping-a-lot, never-napping thing. I don't really consider sleeping for 17 hours napping, myself. I mostly consider it A Sign That Something's Up.

As in my body's called out all the troops and shut down all non-essential systems, like consciousness.

I'd like to say I feel a lot better since then. I do, mostly. I think I'd feel better if I'd gone to the gym, but I haven't. Part of it's been the flooding, part of it's been the sleeping, and part of it's because of a book, a non-fiction book: They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 by David Maraniss. I stayed up way too late last night finishing it.

The thing is, I pretty much knew what happened; I'd seen an episode of Frontline, Two Days in October, that covered the same events. One day in October, American soldiers were ambushed and famous soldiers were killed; the next day, in Madison, WI, anti-war protests turned violent for the first time. Despite knowing the outlines, I wanted to know the specifics. And the book is very well-written--I highly recommend it.

So that's where I've been, sleeping, reading and not working out. I have a couple of things I'm supposed to read (and what I think of the Dreaded Shoulds is a subject for another day), I have a pile of library books I wanted to read...but instead I think I'm going to dig out my copy of Stanley Karnow's Vietnam. I think I'm ready for it.

Bleah

I decided that I was going to try to post every day, that every day didn't require an essay, and that I would talk about whatever was in the noodle for the day.

Tonight I have a bad case of the bleahs.

I think my hip is protesting all the rain--at any rate, it hurt all day. That got my lower back agitated and then my knee joined the party. All the achiness spread, and now I feel like I've got flu-like symptoms and I just want to go to bed.

I never just want to go to bed. My sisters think it's a sign of dire times if I admit I took a nap. If I tell them I'm going to take a nap, they just nod and know I won't. I never have. As a small child, I once stooped to holding my eyes open, just so I wouldn't sleep. (Okay, maybe I did it more than once--the odds are pretty good that I did--but I only got bagged once. Which is why I know about it.)

I'm almost stupid with tiredness, but here I still am. Yapping. When I should be sleeping. Or at least getting ready for bed.

Which is exactly what I would have done when I was four. I used to say that men don't grow up, they just grow taller, but I sometimes suspect that's true of all of us...

And now I feel much less bleah and much more like myself. Life is good.

Drip, drip, drip..ker-FLOOD!

It's pouring outside. It's been pouring for the last 24 hours. Every now and again, the rain stops and the air just sort of mists, almost like it's catching its breath for another round of rain. And then the sky opens up and it all comes flooding down again.

As far as I know, it's supposed to keep raining until sometime in 2008.

I'm kind of out of it, partly because I lounged in bed this morning, listening to the rain and trying to meditate on my story. I need to write two scenes, scenes that introduce two more characters, and since I haven't got the least clue what these characters' arcs are, I got nuthin' on either of them.

Sigh.

This is one of those things that makes writing fiction so maddening. You get absolutely, positively, pig-headedly convinced you need to do something, but you don't know why you need to do it, and you really don't know how to do it. (Why often leads to how, I've found.)

So you think, I won't do it then. I won't add those characters.

Very nice and rational. Except the pig-headed thing kicks in and you absolutely balk at cutting the characters, or changing the locale of the scene, or whatever it is that's giving you fits.

Okay, maybe this doesn't happen to you. But it happens to me. A lot.

It's part of what makes my process as slow as cold molasses. Sure, I could just scribble whatever, but I'd end up deleting it all. On top of that, sometimes doing that just muddies the waters, muddling me. It's kind of like knitting: you should be knitting but you're not ready, so you purl instead. Then, when you're ready to knit, you have to unravel all the purling before you can start.

I need some popcorn. And a movie.

And an idea...

Letting it all hang out

There are a couple of blogs I read that are updated every day, with whatever's on the blogger's mind. They've inspired me to try to the same thing, to not wait until I have an idea or something I want to say. To just talk, post a little note, be here.

~*~*~*~

Tonight I'm tired. I've been working on a project at work that involves walking around and taking pictures of art and antiques, and I think that's wiping me out just a little. I also think hayfever's doing a number on me--I have a complete love/hate relationship with spring:

On the one hand, the trees are leafing out and everything's so green.

On the other hand, the trees are leafing out and casting pollen to the four winds. Which is how it gets into me, where it makes my eyes ache and my sinuses feel like they've been stuffed with concrete. Oh joy.

Tonight it's damp and foggy. It's supposed to stay damp for days. Which isn't entirely a bad thing: we can use the rain, and the damp washes away the pollen. But days on end of gray wear me out. I love rain, and rainy days...but I'm fond of sunshine too.

~*~*~*~

Good reads: Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon and (so far--I haven't finished it) Throne of Jade. Also very good--a devour-in-a-single-night, stay-up-way-too-late book--is Nancy Pickard's new one, The Virgin of Small Plains.

~*~*~*~

What else? I have a new desk, which means my office is torn to pieces and I don't know where too much stuff is, and I have stuff to do that I haven't got done...but I'm chipping away at all of it, breaking my goals down into smaller pieces and doing those smaller things.

And the office: well, I'm using this as an opportunity to be pretty ruthless with myself about my "collectibles"--aka all the stuff I never used, never looked at but couldn't quite bring myself to toss. Things that had some sentimental value...but not enough to keep whatever. Presents from people I haven't seen or been in contact with in nearly 20 years, stuff like that.

One thing that's making the process of organizing slow is that I'm thinking it through. "What works for me? How do I really work?" (As opposed to some idea of how I ought to work, or maybe if I did X, I could work like that, even though experience has taught me I will never work like that.)

So that's where I am. Maybe I'll just keep you posted on what's what and how I progress.

I might not post tomorrow--long, long, long day at work: I have to coordinate a night move that I think will go until 10:00 PM, which means I won't be home until 11-ish...and then I have to go in again on Saturday.

So we'll see. But I'm going to try...