Perpetual Ruminations

Thursday

Back to work today, well tonight. I will leave in a couple hours and hope the roads aren't too bad. We are in another Spring snow storm and getting hit pretty heavy. This has become a weekly event, or very close to weekly. This time around I have not had to drive in early, and that is a good thing.

I don't mind the extra hours, I don't mind the shift, but getting woke up at three in the morning by someone who lives thirty miles from work because they can't make it in with a four-wheel drive truck not very pleasant. Especially since that means I have to drive through the same conditions twenty-five miles in a two-wheel drive van. The only real difference is he lives on a main state highway, and I live on a secondary state highway.

I have enjoyed the last few days off, even though I have been interrupted with phone calls and had to do some work during my time off. This comes with the title of supervisor and is part of the job. I don't get compensation for anything other than my work shift, but I do get a bit more pay. I'm still adjusting to the difference in time off now, since Rhonda no longer works at Target and that headache has ended. In fact, I still feel some apprehension about this coming weekend, even though it will be much different. It will take some time to adjust.

Even so, it has already begun. I actually wrote something during my time off. I have been trying, but not having any luck. I started a new item a few days back. Well I think it was over the weekend, but time is difficult to keep track of sometimes. I didn't get a chance to do much with it on Monday, since I worked early. It was kind of a messed up day anyway. I didn't get in here much at all on Tuesday, but yesterday I decided to write something.

I had no ideas, so I just started with the first thoughts that came to mind and went from there. I did get some stuff down, but it was not a story or poem, it was more of an entry for here. So, after I finished it, I copied and pasted it in my journal, so I could keep it, use it, and start again to write something. Even as I did my copy and paste, I had a vague idea enter my mind.

I returned to my item, to delete it now that it was saved safely in my journal, and as I did, the idea finished surfacing. It was not very developed yet, but enough to jot down and save for further work. I started typing and even as I did, more ideas fell into place and the story began to take some shape and a subject formed. An adventure in fiction, with a moral in it. A good story for children.

I don't tend to write children's stories, but then I don't tend to follow any specific genre. I write what comes to mind, be it poetry, fiction, horror, erotic, and even romance. I enjoy the erotic and the romantic, and had thought about doing more specific writing in these areas, but perhaps that became part of the block.

I was trying to direct my thoughts to one single direction, when my brain does not work that way. My thinking is multi-directional, with thoughts in many directions all the time. Therefore, my ideas and creativity are also multi-faceted and when I try and direct them, I instead limit and obstruct them.

I should know this by now. I do this with work, things are going on and it takes my full attention. Between doing the actual job, performing supervisory tasks, and dealing with problems, I have to narrow my mental energy in one direction. It drains me, strains me, and if it goes on for too long, it could even disables me. I need a break after a while, some kind of escape.

I know this is going to be a part of my life, but I do what I can to avoid problems, and when I can't, I try to quickly solve them. There are those times I cannot, and I have to find ways to take a break, to escape, for even a night or a day. That's part of my job, and I will adjust. But, why do it to myself in areas non-work related? Especially in writing, since that is my main escape?

I do it, I think, to try and nurture my creative side. I pick something I really enjoy writing and try to motivate my mind with it. Instead, I need to learn to let my mind go where it wants, to motivate the creative side without restricting where it can go. Then, and only then, can I really be creative in my own natural state. What comes out sometimes even boggles my own mind, but it is who I am.

This was the case yesterday, I set my mind on a task to write. I had nothing, no direction, no ideas. Then, as i thought about stopping and moving on to something else, I had a thought. Not an idea but a thought. I thought about an old saying, no time like the present. I wrote it down, and then I thought about who said it. They. Who are they? I began to go in this direction, but I changed it to a direction I wanted to develop.

Writing, and why I need to, and why can't I. As my mind opened into developing this line of thought, I opened it up and someplace in the darkness of my unconscious mind, ideas began to form. I believe they often do. It's just bringing them forward into consciousness that gets blocked. As I finished, I seen I needed something different, but it would have to wait for another day.

What I could do, however, is use what I just wrote to complete my journal entry and have that done. Then, I would eat supper and relax with my wife for a while before bed. I wanted to watch some Voyager with her, I needed to check weather updates, and I may have to be up at three in the morning, but for now, all this was pushed aside while I wrote out my thoughts and directed my thinking to saving them in my journal.

This also pushed them out of the way long enough for an idea to surface into thought from below thought. I tend to think of consciousness as the surface of a lake or see. It is the land, the sky, all things from the surface up. Below the surface lies a world of mystery, the subconscious. So, it surfaced, bobbing like a cork. I could not see all of it, but it was enough to find it and pluck it from the water. As the cork emerged, more if it came into view and the idea took shape.

Now, I have that idea jotted down, I have a brief description of all that I seen. Next I need to take this and add color and form, direction and meaning. I need to take it apart and put it back together into a story. I can make it long, I can make it short, but it is now in my hands to shape and develop. I want to write, or more accurately, I need to. It has been a long time and I have a need, so I decided to make it a short story. How short I do not know, it must be told, and it could be micro short or it could be pages short.

I do want to develop it in a certain direction, as a children's story, so it will have to be short enough to be read by children. I will also have to carefully choose my wording to fit the vocabulary of children, and I want to add in a moral for children. I have that already, it is being content with what you have. Now I just need to use my imagination and bring it all to life.

The next obstacle is just that, bringing it to life. It's like creating a picture, first I sketch it out, crudely. Then I add some details for the background, and then I have to paint it all. Only, I use words instead of paint. the obstacle I foresee is time. I have to go to work now, so I cannot write whenever the urge hits, I have to try and control it to time I have available. This is possible, but it will take effort and time.

In the past, I wrote the same way I thought, when ever it hit. It worked, but I had open time. It wasn't always this way, however. There was college, and I had deadlines and time limits, as well as other aspects of life to contend with. I did it then, I can do it again now. In fact, it may even be more productive for me. It's just going through the change that is difficult. I tend to get frustrated and throw in the towel too easy. I must persevere and practice persistence.

I have little patients, so I must develop perseverance to take it's place. This is something I have needed to tackle for most of my life. It is why I have so many stories and poems started and unfinished and why I have works that are finished, yet I want to go back and do more. Instead of finishing something undone, I want to take the easy and less frustrating path of finishing those that are already done.

Not this time, we will continue the story to it's end. And, perhaps we should even put a time frame in place. A goal to work towards. We should have the first draft done by a date, just like writing for my Comp Class. Lets start with two weeks, or May 1st. We have a week then to get the first draft done, and a week to edit it.

Now, where to put my goals down so I can see them daily? I'll find a spot.