Sometimes It's The Little Things

Today it was very cold in Boston, so proper bundling was absolutely necessary. When I went to get ready to go outside, I couldn't find one of my mittens. I'm normally very careful of things like mittens and earmuffs--it stays cold enough for both well into March, and you can't find either in the stores much past January 10th. So losing either at the end of January is Not A Good Thing.

I know that as careful as I am, I'm likely to lose mittens, gloves or earmuffs, so I try to keep extras on hand. After sorrowfully concluding that the brown mitten was gone, I went into my stash and got out a pair of wool ones I don't like all that much. I used that pair today, but I have to say that I dislike it even more than I thought: they make me itch.

So imagine the cries of joy when I found the missing mitten under an afghan in one of the living room chairs. I wasn't even sure it was the missing mitten; for a moment, I thought I'd "found" the one I hadn't lost. But a quick hunt confirmed that I had two mittens, a real pair, and they don't make me itch.

Sometimes it's the little stuff that makes you really happy.

Competition

One of the big surprises of my weight loss experience a couple of years ago was discovering how competitive I am. I'd known I didn't like playing games with people because it was stressful, but I didn't know why. I don't remember now if I even had a theory about it. I have a vague sense that I thought I wasn't any good at any thing so I never had any fun.

Then I started my weight-loss diet, courtesy of the Weight Watcher points system. Everything had a point value (based on a combination of calories, fat and fiber), and in order to lose weight, I was limited to X points per day. (The number of points varied, depending on how much I weighed--I had more points per day at my heaviest than at my present weight.)

The competitive thing kicked in fairly early on--there was no way I was going over my daily points tally. I'd be hungry, I'd be tired of the struggle, I'd want to give up...but as soon as I thought about having that dish of ice cream, or whatever the temptation was, something kicked in, this hard clamp inside would grip me and I wouldn't be able to have the tempting thing, no matter what.

I'm dealing with that again. I'm trying to make sure I write regularly, so my fear of the page can't get its claws into me. I'm using a system I heard about, setting a daily goal--something small and not very intimidating--and then putting stickers on a calendar for every day I meet my tiny little goal.

There have been days this month where I really didn't feel like writing. But as soon as I imagined not being able to put my sticker--a foil star--on the calendar (Irish Castles), I had to write. I had to be able to put the sticker on the calendar. It was that same clamp of determination, that same competitive thing, that same, "I have to win and stay out of my way until I do" thing.

I'm kind of ambivalent about this facet of my character. It's strong and it makes me intense. I wouldn't want to play Monopoly with me, so I don't want to play Monopoly with people I like. I want to keep them in my life and I'm not sure that would happen after one round of death-Monopoly with yours truly.

On the other hand, when it serves me, it serves me well. So, like most things, it's double-edged, a gift and a curse; how you see it depends on the angle from which you see it.

Today's Beauties

After yesterday's meltdown--which wasn't major, as they go; there was no weeping involved, always a good sign--it's nice to sit here and be able to think of three beautiful things without straining. (This is the kind of thing that makes my sisters and me call ourselves Weebles: We wobble but we don't fall down...)

1. Being reminded, without looking or asking for it, that my friends love me.

2. Music--in this case, Patty Griffin and Ron Sexsmith: lovely melodies, satisfying words. Bliss.

3. The internet, which gives me the music and the connection to the friends, and the words of wisdom I find when I need them, and...

and a fourth, just because...

4. Mocha Fudge Ripple fat-free frozen yogurt. It probably sounds dire, but I love it more than regular ice cream; relatively little satisfies me.

So, today? A good day.

Black Hat With Gray Streamers

Warning: Pity party ahead.

Okay, maybe not a full-on, pointy-black-hat-with-gray-streamers, dirt in my mouth pity party. Maybe just a little bout of "woe is me." Or maybe a stretch of "What the #%@$&?" instead.

Anyway, I'm in a bruised-feeling funk, and I don't know what to do with myself. Did you ever have one of those stretches where everything you do is wrong? Where you can't get out of your own way and you can't make a call that doesn't make people say, "What were you thinking?" That is, if they're still speaking to you?

That's where I am, that unlovely place. I don't like it here, where my confidence is sapped and I'm questioning everything. I want to crawl in a hole and stay away from everyone. The fewer people I talk to, the fewer I can annoy.

Unless I annoy them by disappearing.

Arggh! It's everybody's favorite, "You can't win for losing."

It's hard when you've done the best you could in every moment, and it's backfired on you; it's harder when you look back and it's pretty clear you should have made a different decision.

Yeah, I know, hindsight is always 20/20, etc., etc., etc. The thing is, sometimes it's clear that in the moment you couldn't have made a different decision. So you let it go. It's no fun, but you let it go. What's harder to let go of is looking back and realizing it could have gone either way, because in the moment of deciding, you had some or all of the information you needed to make a better decision.

And that, as painful as it is, isn't even what's gnawing me and driving me into the cave. It's knowing that other people have been affected by my decisions, and not in a good way, and there's nothing I can do about it, no way I know of to make it right.

So what can I do? Wait.

Wait for time to do its thing, carrying me (and everyone else) past this moment, these days. Things will change, because they never stay the same, and I'll keep making decisions, because you can't stop. (Even choosing not to decide is a decision...and sometimes the worst one you can make.) Hopefully, I'll start making better ones, or if I make bad ones, I'm the only one affected by them.

And in the meantime, I'll think about that black hat with the gray streamers, the one I'm trying not to wear.

Three beautiful things

1. I thought of them today, sitting at my desk this morning at work.

1. Hot oatmeal with apples, cinnamon, raisins and walnuts. Sweet, bitter, smooth and creamy and crunchy. It satisfies my mouth, my hunger and my heart.

2. Getting a new neighbor in the next cube over...who turns out to be friendly and nice and a pleasure to have around.

3. Being so much of a part of a team that you don't think about being one. You all pull together naturally because you're all (pretty much) going in the same direction.

That's about all I have for today, but I think they're pretty cool. It makes me happy just to look at them.

Con-spire

In one of the blogs I read regularly, the word "conspire" was broken in two with a dot, and suddenly I thought, "Breathe with." So I looked up conspire with a view to finding out if I was right about that "breathe with."

And I was. Mind you, conspire still has some fairly sinister connotations, but there's still something lovely about the image of two people so in tune, so in harmony, that they breathe together.

~ * ~ *~ * ~ * ~

Harmony leads me to an excellent book, one that explained a lot of things about music that I didn't know before and still don't entirely understand. Once I get the book back from my sister, I suspect I shall be re-reading it--I have a feeling that a few things will finally sink in. The book is This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin. It's engagingly written, and the examples he uses are things I know--before he became a neuroscientist, Levitin was a record producer.

~ * ~ *~ * ~ * ~

After reading the Levitin book, I turned to Sarah Graves's latest, Trap Door. There's no particular reason I like her books so much, except that I like the way she writes, and I love visiting her fictional Eastport. I live on the east coast, so I've occasionally been tempted to go up and see the real Eastport, but I'm not sure I want to spoil what I've imagined, if that makes any sense.

One of the things I like about the series is how she keeps Jake off-balance. There's always something or other not quite right in her world, but she doesn't have whatever it is linger too long. She solves the problem...and creates another one. The problems have been getting darker and more realistic, which is both sad and bracing.

And now I only have to wait another year for the next book.

~ * ~ *~ * ~ * ~

With that finished, I'm kind of between books. I have a lot of fantasy on my pile, but I'm afraid to read it. The stuff that appeals to me as a reader is also appealing to me as a writer, and I'm afraid of being too heavily influenced. If I come up with an idea that's very like something someone else did, I want to know that it was coincidence and not borrowing. Or stealing, for that matter.

I've started another mystery, this one set in Appalachia, but I'm not sure I'm going to finish it. The writing isn't doing it for me. I'm not sure that's the writer's fault; I think I'm looking for something like Sharyn McCrumb, and this book isn't it for me. (Despite the common setting and a lovely cover quote from Ms. McCrumb.)

~ * ~ *~ * ~ * ~

And that's about all I have going on right now...

Dailyness

Well, I'm writing a little every day. The funky thing is that I'm describing what happens in the scene without actually writing the scene...and I'm starting to suspect this is what I should have been doing all along. Write the story part first -- the what happens and why and what it means and the underneath stuff -- write it out without worrying about show v. tell or anything. And then, when I've written the whole story out like that -- whether it's a short story or a novel -- translate it into narrative and dialogue and description and conflict, and all the other things that tell the story indirectly. The fun stuff, the stuff I don't have a hard time with (mostly).

We'll see how this goes...

A piece of happiness

Go here if you want to read something that will put you in a good mood:

http://threebeautifulthings.blogspot.com/.

It's utterly lovely.