The dangers of speaking aloud
March is coming. Earlier this year, or rather very, very late last year, I called myself making some resolutions. I said I was going to exercise more. I said I was going to write more; I have a deadline in early April, two in fact, one of which I didn't find out about until earlier this month.
So how am I doing? I park farther from the job so I walk more at work. I take the stairs (doesn't really count, there is no elevator). The push ups and sit ups continue. Overall, it's a bit of a bust, but with warmer weather comes the avalanche of guilt. "Well, it's still cold out."
Over the next six weeks, I'm going to have to finish an art project, submit about fifteen pages of sterling prose, and marry some friends in holy matrimony. The project has been mired in the sort of dust and minutia that populates the back burner, and the prose isn't sterling, and there certainly isn't fifteen pages of it (rather, I have a running tally of the absolute dumbest ideas I've ever had in my head, and they just keep coming).
A Chinese curse came to me from the television, which of course makes it about as accurate as wikipedia. But, that it even could be a curse never occurred to me, and that made it fairly intriguing: "May you live in interesting times" is about how it goes. I don't know about anyone else, but I constantly envision myself someday doing amazing and great things, interesting things. Which would make the times I live in interesting. Which means that for all the good, I have to enjoy some bad, too. Stress and migraines and deadlines and failures.
Sunday I have to call an editor about some poetry I submitted to his online magazine. His correspondence inferred that he liked it; at least, it didn't seem likely that he'd want to talk me on the phone just to reject me voice to voice. And a novella I wrote will be published by a web-zine in the same March that's going to be so busy and surreal. That's some good for the mix. Maybe life is a recipe that always produces a different dish? You can put in whatever you want, so long as it fits in the pre-heated oven. Bake for a few decades. Let sit until cool. And you have to eat it. Hopefully enjoy it.
And supposedly, according to my dubious sources, there's a second part to that curse that doesn't sound like a curse but maybe is a curse: "May you get what you seek."
Count me cursed.
So how am I doing? I park farther from the job so I walk more at work. I take the stairs (doesn't really count, there is no elevator). The push ups and sit ups continue. Overall, it's a bit of a bust, but with warmer weather comes the avalanche of guilt. "Well, it's still cold out."
Over the next six weeks, I'm going to have to finish an art project, submit about fifteen pages of sterling prose, and marry some friends in holy matrimony. The project has been mired in the sort of dust and minutia that populates the back burner, and the prose isn't sterling, and there certainly isn't fifteen pages of it (rather, I have a running tally of the absolute dumbest ideas I've ever had in my head, and they just keep coming).
A Chinese curse came to me from the television, which of course makes it about as accurate as wikipedia. But, that it even could be a curse never occurred to me, and that made it fairly intriguing: "May you live in interesting times" is about how it goes. I don't know about anyone else, but I constantly envision myself someday doing amazing and great things, interesting things. Which would make the times I live in interesting. Which means that for all the good, I have to enjoy some bad, too. Stress and migraines and deadlines and failures.
Sunday I have to call an editor about some poetry I submitted to his online magazine. His correspondence inferred that he liked it; at least, it didn't seem likely that he'd want to talk me on the phone just to reject me voice to voice. And a novella I wrote will be published by a web-zine in the same March that's going to be so busy and surreal. That's some good for the mix. Maybe life is a recipe that always produces a different dish? You can put in whatever you want, so long as it fits in the pre-heated oven. Bake for a few decades. Let sit until cool. And you have to eat it. Hopefully enjoy it.
And supposedly, according to my dubious sources, there's a second part to that curse that doesn't sound like a curse but maybe is a curse: "May you get what you seek."
Count me cursed.
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