Indoors

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”-Helen Keller

The Fair

“You won't know anything until you don't know anything.”

Wow! Find me a mountain top, flowing robes, and rubes with $1200 and a free weekend and I'll be rich in no time. I suppose I could do the right thing and distill that nonsense down to “Don't assume; learn.” and give it away, but where's the profit?

There's a whole world of people willing to pay for gibberish and we here at Jotsalot Media are just the guys to give it to them. It's entirely possible gibberish is our bread and butter product outside of our Zazzle shop. Might even be opening an Etsy shop for overflow gibberish.

OR. . .

I could stop thinking cynically and let myself be what I want to be. I'm not a gibberish kind of guy outside of here. Pretty darn serious about being funny and making people happy which might be another reason things move slowly around here.

OR. . .

I have the attention span of a three year old at a candy convention. Which is to say I ricochet between projects and never put enough time in to finish one.

OR. . .

I really need a partner, Yes, I need a partner with all the skills I waste time trying to master whilst not doing the things I am good at.

I definitely need a partner.

Maybe You Can Build a Tree Out of Leaves

Odd, convinced I could never compile a book organizing scraps, I committed to it as a method. Sometimes the scraps are a triggering word, sometimes a sentence, sometimes a paragraph and, despite my worst intentions, they're adding up. All the blog posts I promised I would rewrite are organizing into the same book just as I promised them they would. Huh.

I wouldn't suggest this method unless you're writing a book a hundred different stories long.

The most wonderful epiphany happened occurred at work the other night: I can't work full time and create full time. I know I've posted this idea before, threatened to quit before, stayed before. This time I quit. Yep, free and starving like a starling in Winter. Not really, God blessed me with the cheeks of a chipmunk so I'll be okay for quite a while.

Starving Starling and Cheeky Chipmunk are my spirit animals. Being a Pisces I get two with opposing traits.

Now, I'm all in as a collector of leaves.

P.S. Kind of fun if you want to know.

Cravings of a Lunatic

Yesterday I had a premontion that today would be a good day. The day before that I had a premontion yesterday was going to be a good day. I was just plain wrong both times. Granted today hasn't bloomed into a complete wreck mostly because the snow is keeping me in bed. Maybe that is a good thing? Maybe yesterday and the day before weren't all that bad either. Nobody stole my lunch money and not a single person tried to hug me. I suppose that makes them pretty good days. Lowering standards makes bad days better. Maybe, the key to happiness is flexible standards. Yes, my standards are shifty like dunes in a desert or fluid like a lava lamp.

None of this explains accepting my interior designer's bold choice of beige for the bedroom. Why not a nice slutty ochre? Or a bold dungeony slate? Yep, I think beige answers the age old question of what color goes best with celibacy.

What does any of this have to do with the state of my creative projects? Isn't it obvious? my brain has turned a lighter shade of beige, but only for three more weeks.

I Stole This

All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.          -GEORGE SANTAYANA

Amy's Glacier

Glaciers are all about persistence and patience. Lacking the quick reflexes and pouncing skills of slugs, glaciers rely on complacency to trap their prey. Out of the corner of its eye a mountain sees a glacier coming, watches it for maybe a few thousand years, then the second it turns its back WHAM! turned into a valley.

Glaciers are a lot like life that way. You watch, plot, and dream for awhile then just when you think everything is under control WHAM! your dreams are smeared like cream cheese on a bagel. What happened?! I only turned my back for a second! Probably, it was more like a few years and a few more years after that to accept responsibility, and all the while time ground on. Do you know I didn't even see it coming? The horrible realization I wasn't where I was supposed to be, I mean.

Truth is all about timing. It kind of hangs around in the background, knowing WHAM! will come, whether you like it or not.

Okay, somehow the Glacier/Truth/Time continuum is unraveling before my very thoughts (mostly I'm thinking lunch) and I'm going to zigzag like a slug now.

Things are actually progressing inside and out right now. Inside, ideas have taken on prioritizing themselves lest they get time smeared. I like it when plans tire of me and force their own birth. Outside, the sun is coming out and I can work out Winter's kinks in time for swimsuit season.

And if you want to know where all this came from, read the title.

A Long Line to Draw a Conclusion

Men and melons are hard to know. -Benjamin Franklin

It is a little known fact that Benjamin Franklin is my imaginary friend. We talk about a lot of things, but he has never explained this particular quote to me. It would make sense if it concluded with “unless you thump them.” But standing alone all it offers is something to ponder in the produce section.

You know what else is fun to think about while shopping? Yourself. It turns out I'm full of self surprises. I  didn't know I love to draw and love it more after every drawn journal entry. Pretty cool because the drawings crave stories and I have stories needing illustration. You regular readers will point out I've been talking about this for years but, you see, that's all I was doing. I liked talking about it because it sounded cool, but I never really did anything about it. Now, it seems my subconscious was working on it all along. I discovered this at Taco Bell this morning not the supermarket. Not the biggest epiphany of the week, but I'm happy with it.

No, the biggest AHA was realizing I had no fear of public speaking, but lots of fear talking one-on-one. You know when I learned this? Right after explaining to the lunchroom the need to wash their hands (I was paid to do this) and being cornered afterwards by a fink wanting to name names. Maybe it was her insistence that scared me, but I really wanted the obscurity of a crowd.

No, I don't have any point.