Coveting Another's...

In the last few months I have discovered what covet truly means. As a good and faithful Sunday School attendee all my childhood and youth I knew it was one of the top ten. I found it a bit silly; no one could want what someone else has so badly the want will send them to Hell.

I grew up.

I have worked in a profession that is also my passion for 23 years.

Then my friend Dave quit his job and retreated to a cabin in the Rocky Mountains to edit the novel he had written on a previous sabbatical.

I covet his experience.

The introvert me covets the isolation.

The exhausted me covets the time.

The stressed-out me covets the escape.

Every time I encounter an unexpected situation; every time the stress begins to build, my mind asks, “where’s my cabin?” Coyotes, bears, and hailstorms be damned - they’re easier to deal with than people. I ponder the question, “what would happen if I loaded the car and left?”

The answer is immediate: the student loan people will still track me down.

The fantasy ends that quickly, but the coveting does not. I have been working in my house lately to build my own cabin. The garage (too small for a car, I don’t know what the builders were thinking) is becoming a workshop for handiwork crafts. My office finally has enough shelving that I do not have piles of books covering most of the floor, and as soon as I refinish the old wooden desk I have, I will have my personal reading and writing space. I do what I can with what I have.

None of this is far removed from society - I still hear the planes arriving and departing. There are no wild creatures - there are roommates. It is not the high altitudes of Colorado, but when my mind asks for a cabin, I’ll have an answer and maybe the coveting will move to wanting. I’ll plan a vacation accordingly.

Because...

Less than a day after Oxford announced that “selfie” was its word of the year, the Internet was ablaze with articles about the new preposition in the English language. As annoying as it is to have such a narcissistic term become the word of the year, accepting the change in usage of “because” is accepting one of the seven deadly sins into language. Using “because” as a preposition represents linguistic sloth at an unforgivable level.

Making  “because” a preposition usually serves to state something already obvious that could go without saying or it leaves the reader scratching their head.

“I tripped and almost fell today because clumsy.” We kind of figured that out at tripped. And you are telling us this because overshare.

“I cut the waiter’s tip in half because garnish.” So...not enough or too much parsley? The truth be told, you cut the tip in half because jerk.

I enjoy the changes in our language and that we have the ability to take certain liberties with it. I certainly do on a regular basis. Communicating the point we wish to make sometimes does not fit neatly into a grammatical box; stepping outside the traditional box draws attention to the statement being made as the reader/listener notices something unusual about it. Any adjustment to the traditional use of language should have purpose.

That would be the way I approach profanity. I rarely use it due to my belief that it carries great weight when used sparingly and under the right circumstance.

With the advent of text-spelling and Internet grammar, I expect there will be many more changes in the coming years as communication becomes more and more ubiquitous and compressed. Those of us who matured (relative term) prior to the wwwing of content find some of the rapid changes disconcerting.

Nevertheless, the changes will keep coming because creativity.

Getting Ahead

Every day I have a goal of reading some and writing some just for me. Reading and writing for work do not count since I have to do it every single day. The vast majority of what I write goes no farther that the notepad or draft file in my documents folder. Writing going no farther is fine with me - it is for me and serves to help me clarify my thoughts.

However, each year during November, I make it a goal to publish one piece of writing to my blog every single day as a part of National Blog Posting Month (there will be an icon each day). The event began in November and upon becoming corporate, spread to every month with a given theme. I continue to do November because of the origins and because it has become habit for me. Because 95% (some would argue 100%) of my writing is so unrefined, I feel the need to get an advance start on composing 30 posts. I began this week to come up with a list of topics to which I feel I can dedicate a couple hundred words. It is just a blog after all, not the New Yorker.

If I were writing New Yorker articles, I would be paid and you could pay to read my rambling there.

I managed to get a solid list of subjects on which I feel passionately enough about that I can compose four or five posts for each one. After coming up with my working list, I reviewed the scheduled posts for the last three years - some topics returned for the third year (spirituality, food, sports) and some new ones emerged. I even came up with some working titles based on documents I have in my draft file or recipes I have been experimenting with. (It pays to keep even the most inane former thoughts in reach - they may mature into something not-so-inane).

When it comes to rules, I tend to be a literalist and want to follow them as intended. By preparing over five weeks before the 30 days of posting begins, I sometimes wonder if I am cheating. I have gone over the rules (well, what I can find that constitutes rules) and all they call for is a post each day. Nothing says the post has to be composed that day. As much as I feel guilty about preparing ahead, I do not feel so guilty I am putting any of my preparation aside.

I continue to have my goal of reading and writing some each day regardless of whether it leads to a product I am willing to share. November is the condensed time when I take all those loose ideas and edit them into daily content. That is what I celebrate over those 30 days - even if it takes my 70 days to accomplish it.

Pacing Myself

         I like to think of myself as a witty and clever person. To be entirely honest though, it comes in fits and spurts. I have moments when my mind explodes with puns equal to O’Henry, witticisms that would make Dorothy Parker proud, and wordplay that would make George Carlin smirk. I want everyone else to think I am as witty and clever as I think I am, so I have to find ways to parse out my wit and wisdom in digestible bites.

         Why am I telling this if I want to protect my secrets?

         This week’s Lenten scriptures are all about repentance and confession.

         And the three people who read this are not likely to blow my cover.

         Because my cleverness comes in such bursts, I have started using technology to preserve the creativity until an appropriate time. I have to pace myself. While the creativity comes in waves, the dispensation of that creative wisdom must be measured and steady. I have discovered how to use the voice and notes program on my phone to record exceptional thoughts. I have a half-dozen blog posts sitting in draft form as I season them with just enough creativity to (hopefully) not be a waste of bandwidth.

         I have also been perfecting my use of TweetDeck. It lets me type the tweet and schedule it for a later time. That way my Twitter feed does not get overwhelmed with my witticisms and my Facebook timeline does not spam all my dear friends by filling up their timeline with an incomprehensible volume of genius.

         I am nice like that.

         On top of being witty and clever.

New Season Blues

         In an effort to separate life from work – at least a little bit – I have tried to watch some of the new season of television. Since I do not have cable I have been limited to broadcast television: and once again, PBS has the only shows for which I stay awake through most of the broadcast. Perhaps it is the television snob in me. Perhaps it is because I actually enjoy learning something more than sitting for gimmie punch-lines.

         Twenty-five years ago my degree in radio-television production made me highly critical of television as an entertainment medium as I could spot every microphone shadow and continuity failure. Good writing saved some of the television shows at the time. Either shows have become much better at hiding those pesky microphones (they have become comparatively microscopic) or I have lost my eye for such things (aging does that). Sadly I have yet to find any good writing this season.

         The shows I have enjoyed most consistently have had good writing and good characters. A conversation Facebook chat with a friend of mine recently explained why I do not watch some of the shows. He was anxiously awaiting the premier of one of the popular reality shows – which I confessed to watching one time. He could not believe that I was not hooked. I summed it up with one statement, “I would not be friends with any of the people on the show.” You want reality; that’s it. The reality producers effectively craft characters from all the people participating in the show by selectively choosing which bits to air: mostly drama without the writers creating a story. Reality does not need production.

         I work with people all day long. I do not need to come home to more “real” drama. The created drama on PBS, though takes up little of the programming time and creates stories and characters I look forward to watching. Downton Abbey, Dr. Who, Call the Midwife, all have stories that captivate and characters who fascinate. Dr. Who has finally captured my attention even though it has been around, off and on, longer than I have been (continuously). The other documentary and educational programming engage my brain enough that I do a better job of staying awake than any of the laugh tracks.

         I find it fascinating that the laugh track was supposed to make it easier to laugh because the view was laughing along with others. It also helped the ignorant viewer know when a joke had been made. Despite the laugh track, I can make it through entire episodes of some of the shows I have seen this season without even breaking a smile.

         Now that I have given them a few weeks to grow on me (though I mostly slept through them – seriously they could not even keep me awake), I have reached the point of giving up on television for another season and the cable company will futilely attempt to get me back.

Just in Time

Some days demand that everything work right lest they turn into disaster. Yesterday was one of those days for me. By quirk of calendar, I ended up coordinating two events at the same time. Fortunately, they were both at the same location, so I could run back and forth between them. Despite their proximity, for them to work, both had to run exactly on time so I could do my necessary duties for each one.

Like clockwork each event went off on cue.

Part was due to simple good luck. Part was due to my ability to plan and schedule.

In the last few years, I have recognized that I have a photographic calendar in my mine. I remember details, dates, and days of the week almost perfectly. I am not one of those super-humans who can instantly recall the information, but with a little thought, I am able to get it. Such organization comes in handy with the many projects I have going on simultaneously.

One thing I discovered and have really been thinking about following an innocent comment of one of the participants yesterday was that I do not do a good job of communicating my organization.

As long as I am in charge and able to directly command the situation everything works great. The moment I step aside and assume others know what is going on, confusion and chaos take over. I need to learn to communicate the details of my organization much more effectively, so others have a better understanding of what is going on. People look at me as a leader, but I can see that this is one area of development I need to manage.

By luck, both events worked out yesterday, but I cannot count on luck happening every time I manage events. There are many around me who can have a bigger part in the event and themselves become stronger leaders. I made notes throughout the day yesterday and now am working out formats for communicating the organization I have in my head so I do not have to count on events playing out just in time.

The Creative Nuisance

I do now know why creativity works for me in quite the way it does, but the writing notion most frequently strikes me while I am in the middle of some essential task from which I cannot break away. While I did have a significant amount of deep thinking and creativity over my recent break, the fun creativity struck about the time the first annoying email crossed my screen at work. People with whom I work are generally fine, it is the people in affiliated organizations who expect their whims and wishes to take precedence who grate on my last nerve. With the first annoying email, I began to think of names I could call the person and what fun it would be to recreate her parents’ thought process in generating her name.f

But no!

I had important work to consider. Tasks to get done. Meetings to schedule. I did not have time to whip out pen and paper and start writing jokes.

So I pulled out a post-it pad and scribbled down the most memorable puns and posits regarding her parental moniker manipulation.

Soon work engulfed me and I began to make real progress for the day until my phone started chiming with emails and texts - mostly work related, but some socially connected ones immediately distracted me with thoughts about how to respond.

Some days I think I need Ritalin - and I should have not Googled the correct spelling of Ritalin as it took me to new and wondrous topics I never expected from a drug designed to help one concentrate - but then again, Google knows someone looking up Ritalin probably is having trouble concentrating.

The truth behind it, I think, is that when I am not working, my mind really can go wherever it wants and take as many tangents as it wishes. When working, though, my mind gets trapped in a little box called “work,” and seeks any window for an escape.

One reason I keep finding post-it notes with various phrases or sentence outlines originates from the creative interruption in my work cycle. Sometime it originates in taking bad notes and forgetting what they all mean.

Whatever it is, the creativity does often for me becomes a nuisance. I appreciate the creative juices when they are directed at fulfilling the demands of the job, but dread the interruptions that take me far from the workplace in my mind. Until I have a job that fully integrates my creative and productive desires, I am stuck with battling the wills of each value and occasionally catching myself boundlessly bantering with silly sentences of alliteration.