Ruling on Rules

Image result for gif india traffic I’ve always been a rules person. Take a number; hands inside the car at all times; no sweatpants outside. I respect rules.

But sometimes the rules don’t serve us. Sometimes the rules form tiny little parallel fences that keep us on our tight little paths. Sometimes, you kinda want to wear sweatpants outside.

Rules fulfill a purpose by helping us maintain order within our lives and beyond. Imagine a busy fast-casual restaurant where the line had never been invented.

Terrifying, right?

But sometimes rules keep us comfortable, complacent. Sometimes we use them not as guidelines, but as crutches. As bases for “can’ts.”

I’m not an advocate for chaos. I think civilization is one of humankind’s greatest achievements. Or near-achievements, given that we don’t all seem to be quite civilized.

But I digress.

Once in a while, we need to take stock of our rules. Of our shoulds and shouldn’ts and musts and mustn’ts. We need to look at which rules serve us, and which rules serve as comfortable barriers. As nice, cozy self-imposed limitations.

None of us are planted in pots. We have the freedom to grow out and up and beyond.

We need only give ourselves the permission.

You Know That Thing That’s Been Bugging You?

You know those little nagging, annoying things in life? Those issues that don’t really matter in the broader realm of life on the planet Earth, but still, they get to you every time you think about them? Get this.

I solved one of those this morning.

We’ll be heading to the Galapagos tomorrow, after I’ve resolved my picture storage issue (so many pictures, so little storage), but today, I want to reflect upon getting that pestering splinter out of your paw. It’s a relief.

Before I tell you about my issue, you have to agree not to judge me. OK, hypothetical reader? Are we on the same web page? No fair keeping your fingers crossed. Are we good? Yes? On we go.

My scanner on my printer mysteriously stopped working. OK, OK, keep it down hypothetical reader, I know. I started out saying it was a minor thing, didn’t I? Yes, minor. I mean the scanner isn’t going to make or break your day, in the scheme of things.

But boy, did it rankle, that every time I tried to use it, the printer said talk to the computer and the computer said, hey, what scanner?

Those electronics can be so cliquish.

This morning, I drew a line in the print queue, and declared “No more!” What’s that, hypothetical reader? No, there was no fist in the air. Why would you think there was a fist in the air? Can we…? Yes? Awesome.

Anyway, I did all the things my depth of knowledge suggested I do. By depth, I generally mean the shallow end. And by shallow end, I mean that glossy layer of water over the steps. I updated drivers.

It didn’t work.

I googled the issue. I tried what they suggested, but it didn’t work. It did, however, lead me down the right path. I had software to download.

I did, and with a grumble as sweet as a choir of super-sweet angels, the scanner worked. It worked!

It’s easy to ignore the thing that bothers you every time you think about it, every time you look at it. You can think away that dull ache of the needle too thin to see but making its presence known.

Or you get hunker down with the tweezers, and get that sucker out.

In or near Chicago in October? Come see “Me Inside Me Presents: Witch, Please,” on October 1, 8, 22 and 29 at Donny’s Skybox Theater at 7 pm. Tickets available at SecondCity.com.

Check out my full-length novels, Her Cousin Much Removed, The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management and Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only), and the sequel, Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) which is now available!

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Picking My Way Through the Fog

100_0812 Sheesh am I foggy-headed this morning. Maybe it’s the weather; maybe it was a night of sleep that felt like another life in another place. Maybe I’ve used up all the spark my brain has to offer.

I hope it’s not that last one.

Somewhere, inside the swaddled cotton in my head, there are words and thoughts and ideas, I’m sure of it. They’re just tired now, and my full dose of caffeine isn’t rattling their cages.

That’s not right.

I don’t keep my ideas in confinement. I fully support free-range ideas, they are given complete run of my head. If only they can find their way through the batting.

Through the batty?

Hmm. Something tells me with that kind of transition, Aunty Ida wants a word with me. Let her find me through the fuzz, then, and very good luck to her.

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Getting Tougher

So A-F just sailed on through with little pondering on my part. As the day arrived, the letter presented itself in an easy-open Sesame Street-like packet. But today we hit G and…no little thought present on my doorstep. Mailbox was empty. It didn’t even leave a “Sorry we missed you” sticky with an impossibly far away address to go pick up my blog post idea.

But sometimes no idea becomes an idea. Deep, no?

No? Really, hypothetical reader? It’s not? I thought it was at least kinda deep. Like in a saying over a pretty unrelated picture on Twitter kind of way. What’s that, hypothetical reader? You like those pictures?

Me too.

But I digress. The act of writing as a must instead of a maybe is never an easy thing. But it does act as verbal cardio, increasing your sentence endurance and writing stamina. And we all know that word-bearing exercise is essential if you want to have non-brittle story structure.

Exercise is exercise, whether it’s your brain or your body. Sometimes it’s tough, and that’s when we get stronger.

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Remember Writing?

Uh, hello. Um, hi. Yes, hi.

I’ve apparently joined the ranks of the bloggers who just don’t blog for a while. Why? I wish I could tell you. For the last few weeks, even the small chunk of time it takes to get words from my brain to my blog seemed too scarce to carve out. I’d sit down to do it, something else would beckon, and then suddenly it wouldn’t be done.

But now I’m back. I hope. I think.

I’ve actually been on a bit of a writing hiatus lately. The only writing I’ve been doing is writing for class, and even that has been slow and lumbering.

I’ve got novels to finish, and, yes, blogging to blog, and yet lately, I just haven’t been making the writing happen. That’s one of the things about writing: you can’t leave it to it’s own devices, like a cake turning from goop to delicious in a just-right oven. Though I call patent on that invention.

The one that lets you write that way. Not the oven. I think I might be a hair too late for that.

No, writing takes time and attention, all the way from conception to completion. There’s no “set-it-and-forget-it.”

We learned a technique for writing in class, one which I’ll share on a future date, after I’ve given it a full test run. Maybe that’s the answer. It involves timers. You know how I love a timer.

But whatever it was or whatever it is, why ever the hiatus, I’m back now. Let the writing resume.

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Evidence of Tulips

So I woke up this morning to another round of snow on the ground. We’d had a thaw, though a colder one than they promised, and then last night, on my way home, I caught the glint of snowflakes in the headlights of a cab.

So much for the warm up.

If there’s snow again, you ask, what’s with the tulips? Well, hypothetical reader, thank you for asking. You always know the perfect question to keep the conversation rolling.

I took this photo at the Chicago Botanic Garden, which, interestingly, is not actually located in Chicago, but in a north suburb. It was last year, and though it was still very chilly — there’s a wind that cuts through the garden on cool day that can ruddy your cheeks and redden your ears — there were the tulips. It didn’t matter what the weather wanted, the tulips decided it was time, and there they were, a whole field of them.

Last winter was much worse than this one. It was colder and snowier and grayer and leached the heat from everywhere until you couldn’t be sure how to be warm.

But it ended.

These flowers are proof that you might not see change while it is happening, you might not sense it. It might not feel like much or as though it’s measurably better than what came before. It can be slow, and plodding, and have to fight the cold as though battling to the end.

But still it comes. The tulips were not deterred, their heads bending as the wind blew across the pond. They didn’t have to feel the spring to know it was spring.

If that could happen after last winter, it will happen again.

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Could It Possibly, Possibly Be?

We had one very warm day, and now it’s cooler again, but it seems inescapable: spring is in the air. Except for a few stubborn patches, the snow is gone, a few random piles of black, gritty ice stubbornly holding on, but they know their time is nearly up.

There are blue skies and brown grass, but the grass won’t stay that way for long. I haven’t seen the buds yet in the trees, but they’re coming. You can feel it.

This winter wasn’t as brutal as last winter, as ceaseless, as ready to take your soul and pack it away in the deep freeze. But still it saps you, the continuous cold under bleak clouds.

Spring is about beginnings. It’s about newness, about freshness. Spring is the mud you gather when you get going, the windburned cheeks and numb fingertips you know are a promise of warmth to come. Spring is seeds and tentative flowers and trees alive with crowded beauty.

Spring takes the browns and the beiges and paints the earth alive with color. It lets everything be new. It lets us be new.

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Philosophy of Snow

So you may have heard we had a huge snowstorm here in Chicago. About 20 inches of snow fell over a day, turning cars into unrecognizable lumps, loading up the branches of trees, coating the roads nearly as quickly as they could be cleared.

I stayed in and watched it from a distance, cozy inside, the sounds of the world muffled by the snow.

But the thing I found remarkable was that there were people out in it. People jogging in the paths of the park as though it wasn’t any different than any other run; dogs frolicking with a level of glee I could see all the way from my window. People on snowshoes. Cross-country skiers.

Even one of the worst blizzards in Chicago history — officially, it is the 5th largest — didn’t stop Chicagoans who wanted to be outside. In fact, a friend sent me a pic of her very determined 4-year-old son, bundled from toe to helmet, sitting on his training-wheel-supplemented-bike on a freshly-cleared sidewalk.

It’s even in the kids.

There will always be barriers in life. There will always be snowstorms, some so heavy it seems like snowing is the new permanent weather. We can lament the snow. We can complain about it, and we certainly do. We can exchange wry smiles in the elevator, smiles that acknowledge that we know it’s there and get on with it anyway.

And sometimes, even at its darkest, even when it falls in impossible sheets, when the break comes, we can go out and play in it.

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Editing is the CPR of Writing

I finished another round of edits yesterday, picking my way through the manuscript and hitting the end. And this time, it’s finally starting to feel like a book.

Phew.

It happens every time. I go back and see what I’ve put down during the writing phase, and sometimes, it seems like it falls apart in my hands, this bit and that bit and that one. But slowly, pass by pass, it finally starts to take shape until it’s something.

I’m not done, not by any means, but with this run through, I got to the point where I could see it, gleaming below the surface, the whole thing. It’s like sculpting, I imagine, with the way some people describe it as seeing what is already in the stone.

But until that happens, the nagging doubt dominates. Was it a waste of time? Were they pointless, all those hours of fingers flying over keyboard, all that time staring out of the window and seeing nothing but what should come next?

For the first time since writing that final sentence, I’m hoping maybe not. Writing gives you the raw material, but it’s the editing that gives the material life.

Need something to read? Check out Her Cousin Much Removed, The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management and Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only) .

Sign up for my spamless newsletter. And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

A Bit to Read

From quick ideas to full books, have a bit to read.

motivation

Ruling on Rules

You Know That Thing That’s Been Bugging You?

Picking My Way Through the Fog

Getting Tougher

Remember Writing?

Evidence of Tulips

Could It Possibly, Possibly Be?

Philosophy of Snow

Editing is the CPR of Writing

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