Writing is hard.

A friend asked me today if I've been writing.

I have. But just a little. And it's hard. The muscles have atrophied, and I'm alternately overwhelmed with inspiration or I have not a single idea that satisfies.

I think about writing. I talk about writing. I stare at a blank page.

My to-do list, sitting on the corner of the desk, catches my eye. I start to fidget. I can't keep sitting here, staring at a white screen, when there are so many things I should be doing.

And then I remember, there are no shoulds. I no longer attend the "church of busyness." Everyone has the same number of hours in the day (and some of them write stuff!). "Busy" people are just the ones who suck at prioritizing.

I think I'm doing what I can to coax the muse out. I'm running/biking/exercising every day, which helps to clear the head (I do some of my best thinking while running and I'm pretty sure I read somewhere recently that there's some science backing me up on that), and I've been making more time for reading lately, which inspires me.

It'll come...

Social Media

Well, I'm thinking about blogging again. Using words. More than just the twice a week photos I've been putting up lately. At least, I've had the impulse to blog lately, though I haven't. So far.

I've been working on the archives for a week or so. I have them all back up, but they're a mess. Photos are not linked properly, internal links 404, and external links are a disaster! Slowly but surely (I'm most of the way through 2005 as of this moment), I'm working through the first two issues while formulating a plan for the third. And I'm enjoying the review. It's making me think about writing again.

The thing is, I don't know what I want to write about, and I'm unsettled with regard to where I should put what I write. Back in the day, there was just the blog. Now we also have facebook and twitter (at the very least!) and I can't wrap my head around how I might use the three in synch with each other. Obviously, extended thoughts belong here, and lately I've been using twitter to share links and interesting web bits. Beyond that I don't know. This business of posting everything everywhere is a particularly annoying practice, so I'd like to formulate at least a loose policy of approach.

Am I over-thinking this?

Disconnection

I'm really bad at blogging these days, and I don't just refer to the lack of posts. I seem to have lost my muse. Every time I sit down and try to write something, nothing comes out. Or it does, but it's not good writing. It's not something that I would want to have to take the time to read.

2010 has been a tumultuous year here at Chez 10K, with lots of huge projects that have kept me distracted and away from the computer -- or only at the computer long enough to spit out the occasional facebook status. And perhaps that's the problem. Just maybe this crazy year has left me with an attention span that doesn't do discourse that lasts longer than a tweet. (Now, there's a truly frightening thought!)

And it's not just my writing that's suffered. The chaos of the year has reduced my reading habits to short bursts as well. Between a lack of time and summer back troubles that have made it difficult to curl up with a good book, most of my reading lately has been done while I'm on the elliptical machine. I don't stop reading when I get to a logical breaking point anymore -- I stop when the timer goes off.

I'm pretty sure this disjointed flow of information and communication is a common trend. I don't have a kindle or a nook, but I see enough of them peppering the world out there to realize that a lot of people do their reading now in tiny fits and starts -- on the bus, over lunch, in the waiting room at the doctor's office -- and I'm afraid that what's getting lost in the shuffle is the time we used to spend reflecting on what we've read -- and on what we say or write. We spit thoughts at each other on facebook and twitter and then we turn on the TV and watch talking heads spit thoughts at each other on the 24-hour news and then we turn on our books and read a few random phrases before we're called away by our stop, the check, or a nurse calling us back to the examining room. We take in a lot of information, but where does it go and what do we do with it?

I don't know. I'm asking questions, but I don't have the answers saved up for some great final flourish. This is just what I'm thinking about this morning. It's something I need to explore further this fall.

On Labor Day this year, I took a really long bike ride all by myself. No iPod. No timer. No destination or agenda. I wasn't even sure where I was headed when I started out. I ended up riding from my house in downtown Chattanooga over to the river and up along its side to the Chickamauga Dam and then back again. It was a gorgeous day and so peaceful and quiet, and it felt really wonderful to spend some time just letting my mind wander.

We're plugged in to so many things these days. How many of us need to be reminded to disconnect once in a while? Looking back on the year, I realize that while I've been struggling to keep up, I could have used a few nudges.

Oy.

Me too. Seems to be a lot of it going around.

In other news, it's really cold outside.

Slow Blogging

Well, this is tempting.   ;-D

I have no words.

I'm not of a mind to write these days. I have a few things in the queue, but haven't been motivated to slap them into shape yet. During the election buildup, I was looking forward to post-election blogging about all things non-political, but nothing really has been flowing for me so far. The gears in my brain haven't shifted yet, so I just don't have much to say.

To make matters worse, I've been a bit of a bore lately -- a happy one, but a yawn nonetheless. What with all the obsessing over Nov. 4th, and especially after hurting my back, things here at Chez 10K were in pretty rough shape. I've been poking at it a bit here and there, but was waiting for an all-clear from the physical therapist before I really hit it hard, and I got that on Friday. So, I spent the weekend vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing and generally puttering about the house, and it was wonderful. I loved every minute of it. I fussed over the plants and sucked up the dust bunnies hiding behind the doors and cleaned out the fridge and made homemade pizza and even watched a few movies with Emmie, who came in to keep me company while G-Dog was out of town leading a retreat over the weekend.

I assume I'll eventually get into a groove when I finally settle into some kind of a post-election routine, but at the moment, I'm at a loss. So, I'll leave you with this, a quote from my rss reader's clippings folder, in which I've been saving up all sorts of fun stuff for non-political posts. I don't have a link, but this is a post from a now-defunct blog that was called Fly Over This, by a dude named Zack. The post's title was "Email Signature Politics."

You know this Margaret Mead quote? "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." That quote seems to have been adopted as the standard email signature for a certain element of the progressive left.

Meanwhile, Christian email is fast adopting Mother Teresa's quote, "There are no great things, only small things with great love."

I like both of those quotes. But I always have the feeling that both are being used as bludgeons against out-of-fashion ideas like long-term planning, goal setting, big-picture thinking and even just plain organizing.

So, at the bottom of someone's email today I saw a great quote that I somehow have not come across before. Maybe I will add it to my own email settings:

"Small acts of humanity amid the chaos of inhumanity provide hope. But small acts are insufficient."
- Paul Rusesabagina

Rusesabagina is the Rwandan hotel manager who saved a whole bunch of people in the genocide and inspired the movie Hotel Rwanda.

Idle hands are a muse's playground

People are pretty much overbooked these days. Mayberry's Andy Taylor no longer just hangs out on his porch in the evening, picking at his guitar while the neighbors wander by; he's gone inside where there's AC, to watch reality TV and goof around on the internet. And Opie doesn't roam Mayberry unsupervised anymore; now he's got karate, soccer, swim team, piano lessons, and cub scouts to get to, and a Playstation waiting for him when he gets home.

I'm worried about how the fast pace of daily life might suck the idle creativity out of us all. Inspiration can't be scheduled and the muses don't really fancy the distracted.

I had a nice lazy day on Saturday. All the media hysteria leading into the icy morning had me predisposed to a snowday mindset and difficulty sleeping because of my sinus troubles put me into a less-than-productive mood. So, instead of hitting the ground running, I lingered over my morning tea, contemplating the ice-scape outside the window and letting my sleepy mind wander. Eventually I noticed that the light fixture over the table was reflected in the surface of my tea. It took several attempts (and a refill) to capture the image, but I'm pleased with the result. And I wonder how many other interesting images present themselves to me on days when I'm just whizzing by...