-
Meta
I’ve been having such a hard time writing lately. I don’t know what my problem is. It’s like I think I have to be in some kind of magic creative mood to write and every time I sit down, I’m brain dead so it doesn’t happen. Of course when that magic moment does strike daily, after my morning coffee, I’m often off driving around town running errands or cleaning house or making breakfast or something so all kinds of posts get written in my head and nothing goes on here.
I’m thinking the best tactic to combat this is to just write anyway. I don’t have to write epic posts that end in sentimental twists. You guys are probably sick of that format anyway. It’s okay to just ramble off any old thing off the top of my head. I don’t know why I put so much pressure on myself.
Wait, yes I do. It’s because there are so many other great blogs out there! Back in the day when I started writing there weren’t very many blogs at all. I wasn’t all that concerned anyway because nobody even knew I existed. Now we’re in all these social communities and there are professional writers to compete with. I just can’t do it.
I think about giving up blogging all the time but that would be such a loss for me. How could I turn my back on such a easy job that has gained me meaningful relationships with friends and business contacts that are a dream to work with? Not to mention, the ads on this site pay just well enough that I would miss them if they stopped. So I guess I’ll plug on through.
And now I’m going to lop this off the top of my regular post and for once post the lopped off part instead of the real post. I do this all the time, did you know that? I start out my posts with long rambling apologies and then I just delete them because who really cares about the meta stuff? But today I’m going to just post the meta stuff because I have no time to get to the real post. But I should get to it soon. It’s about Sea World.
-
hot gritty sweaty
Summer is upon us and the heat has been oppressive. I know I can’t complain since we live at the beach and it’s probably a zillion times hotter in other parts of the country. It’s just that we don’t have air conditioning in our old broken down apartment and sometimes I find myself wondering if winter ever existed. And if it did, why did I complain so much about being cold?!!! I would take that cold any day right about now.
Do you like my makeshift curtains? I knew that crocheted blanket would come in handy when I swiped it from my mom last year. I swear it drops the temperature on the couch about five degrees which is really wonderful when the weather feels like hot dog’s breath.
I’ve been daydreaming about Paris again, as I’m wont to do when the sweat is rolling down my back. It’s my happy place I go to when I’m hot and hating my ugly stained carpet. I like to think about the old broken down apartments I saw when I was there. Window ledges were crumbling, paint was peeling, walls were cracked. Life wasn’t all clean and modern and air conditioned but it was still beautiful in that gritty, these-walls-have-been-here-for-hundreds-of-years sort of way.
My apartment might not be a hundred years old but it feels like it sometimes. So I’ve been trying to see the beauty in it. Not just in my hot sweaty apartment but in life all around me. You know, just ordinary life. Just like that famous photographer said, if you look hard enough you’ll find a picture.
Actually I’m quoting that all wrong. It was Stieglitz who said, “Wherever there is light, one can photograph,” But in my mind I paraphrased it to be something like, “There is a picture everywhere, you just have to find it.” I love thinking that. I love trying to find that picture. Sometimes I have to bend over backwards to find that weird odd angle but it’s there.
Today I tried to find that picture at the laundromat. It made laundry day a lot more fun. Maybe they are mundane photos but life is mundane. Personally, I don’t have a lot of pictures from my own childhood. I’d pay a lot of money to see photos of myself helping my mom do laundry back in the 70’s and 80’s. (Did I even help my mom do laundry? I don’t think I did.) We’ve got lots of pictures of my brother and I at Sea World and camping in Yosemite but not a single one doing something ordinary. I’d love to go back in time and see what that ordinary looked like.
I wonder how much different it is from how we do things now… I find these mundane details way more interesting than say photos of a mountain or a pretty lake. Of course I love photos of beautiful scenery. But it’s the people who change, the fashions, the moments, the little things… that’s what I want to capture. I wonder what Bug will think of all these photos when I’m old and gone. Will there be so many of them that she’ll find it all exhausting? Or will she treasure them?
As you can see, laundry time ran into nap time but I chose to stay at the laundromat and fold my clean clothes there. Why? Because the swamp cooler was blasting out a nice humid breeze and the oldies were playing. I might even say it was pleasant. Which is a first for me and laundry day.
