Biting, Chewing, Swallowing—Not the Same

Every month I look at projects that seem to have bred on my desk while I wasn’t looking. I’m sure every writer goes through this phenomenon once in a while. I always have big projects, small ones, and ones waiting to be given the light of day.

While trying to come up with a post here today, I took a good look at my eight-foot desk—a really good look. I may have taken on a bit much lately.

Among the piles of debris stacked along two thirds of the right side are the magazines and journals from the past two months that I have yet to read. Yes, I do keep that stapler in plain sight, so that I don’t have to rummage through those piles on a doomed search. I have a vague idea what’s contained in those piles; vague being the operative word. The dragons keep stray projects from deserting.

Really important prelim work for one of the novels I’m writing is piled prominently on the floor next to my chair so that I can grab it at a moment’s notice.

I know; chaos. Right?       

Sorting through everything doesn’t come easy for me; it’s a lot like chewing food. The reason is that I’m not sure what I’m going to need or how soon, which means I can’t quite put it aside yet. Living in Limbo is something that’s been necessary for quite a while. It’s not one of my favorite locales, but it beats living nowhere.

Swallowing digital bits and bytes is much easier. Believe it or not, my computer files are much more organized. I keep thinking about a piece from 60 Minutes done by Andy Rooney. He wanted to know if creative and productive people kept their offices neat and orderly, or if they looked like his—out of control on steroids.

I remember watching him wonder through the halls, taking an informal poll about  offices belonging to his colleagues. With camera dutifully following him, chronicling all that was to be seen, Rooney discovered that his domain was, in many aspects, more organized than several others on the staff. Because he knew how hard each of these men and women worked each day, and the types of schedules they kept, he concluded that people who were very productive and creative, were also messy and preferred it that way.

When I envision some of those offices, I can look at mine and smile. At least my books occupy a bookcase, I have no uneaten food lying around, I know where my extra checks are, and my computer is easy to get to. I have actual clear floor space.

Andy might be surprised at how disappointingly uncluttered my office area really is. Or, I could be kidding myself in a fit of guilt-ridden denial.

Must do something about this--I’ve ordered my actual work, now to tackle the physical side of things.

Until later, peeps. Let’s see, if I get all of that pile into the right-side file cabinet…

Claudsy

Communication—Have We Killed It?

How many times do you text instead of call? You use the same keys on the phone for both purposes. You allow for much the same time and concentration for the action. What’s the real difference here?

Is the difference that with texting you can abbreviate nearly every word in order to avoid actually explaining yourself to a live human being? Is this avoidance merely a manufactured stratagem to keep people at a distance rather than to allow them into your life? Have you ever really thought about why you do it? I’m not talking time savings, either.

Texting, for me, is a tedious thing. On the flip side, I no longer care for talking on the phone, either. Some may say that I’m isolating myself from others, including family. But is that true?

Looking at it under the microscope, I see that in one respect the accusation is true. I really detest solicitation calls, harassment-type calls, and those that interrupt my writing activities. As a result, I keep my phone turned off most of the time. Ask my friends and family if you don’t believe me.

Allowing for that quirk of mine, I can say that I also don’t like voicemail. I try to avoid that like a bad case of bird flu. I will return text messages once a day or so if I have them waiting.

Those who know me also know that this is how I deal with things from outside my office and home. As I’ve gotten older, I don’t particularly want interruptions to what I’m doing. I have enough of a juggling act going without that.

I talk to hundreds of people each week on the computer, some frequently, and have no difficulty dealing with the volume, most of the time. Although, there are days when one more email could have me dropping off the cliff called “Not Enough Time.”

I call my dad every day unless I’m prevented by circumstance or timing on a given day. I try to call extended family at least once a month—at least one of them anyway—to touch base and see what the southern group is doing. I also have those family members I connect with on the computer, and as with most families, word always gets around, sooner or later.

Most of the time, I use the phone for business only, with a few exceptions. Friends I don’t get to see in person or family members, who would rather talk on the phone than write, get regular to semi-regular calls from me. The reasons are agreed upon by both parties.

My brother texts me, if he can, instead of calling, mostly because of his schedule and the time zones between us. He hates talking on the phone worse than I do. I think that must come from our upbringing. We weren’t allowed to spend much time on the phone when we were growing up and the call had to have value each time. Telephones weren’t toys back then, and a person didn’t replace them because a new model came out.

Few of us write actual letters anymore. Our personal world pace seems to have gone “a gallopin’” as the old-timers used to say. Our lives are cluttered with so many activities, must-do’s, plans, and expectations that we don’t give ourselves time to stop and think for more than five minutes before we’re off and running again.

Real letters take time to write. Thought is necessary for how and what we write in them. Texting doesn’t require that, only abbreviations and a ten-second window of opportunity. Phone calls require listening to what someone has to say, processing that information, and composing an adequate and appropriate reply.  Emails are faster and less thoughtful most of the time, as is texting.

Is it any wonder that technology has encouraged a withdrawal from the previous methods of communication? Look where the Pony Express got us. The USPS!

Let me know how you feel on this subject. Agree or disagree with what I’ve said. Each communication type has both plus and minus columns.

Until later,

Claudsy

PS—Over at http://claudsy.wordpress.com/ I’ve delved even further into this subject, but with a different slant entirely. Please take a few moments to hop over there and take a gander at the other side of the tracks.

Family Separation, Disconnection, and Chaos Theory

What happens when you’re suddenly contacted by someone you’ve not seen nor talked to in 26 years? Stick around and let me tell you what happened to me.

Last week when I called my father, who’s recuperating from hip surgery in a convalescent center, I got to talk to my brother who happened to be in the room at the time. He asked me if I wanted the phone number and email addy of my first cousin, Pat. I took up pencil and paper and duly wrote down the information. Color me too  shocked to object or question anything.

It seems that she’d paid a visit to Dad that day while visiting with an old classmate. She even brought along the classmate. She’d been thinking about him recently, had spoken to her friend about not being able to contact him, and this classmate happened to be in Burger King one day to discover someone who knew Dad. In that round-about way, Pat was informed of his stay at the convalescent center.

Talk about your seven degrees of separation!

The upshot was that I now had in my possession the information to make contact possible after 26 years. The oddest part of this story, I suppose, was that this cousin had been on my mind for a couple of weeks. I had no clue why I kept thinking about her, though. Couple that oddity with the fact that all of a sudden I’d been picking up friend requests from writers from Indiana for a solid week, when I had no others before that. Now you can glimpse my need to shiver a bit.

Yep, things aren’t always what they seem on the surface, unless you’re like me, and have dealt with too many coincidences in the past to take them lightly. There is no such thing as a coincidence, in my humble opinion.

I contacted Pat, who now goes by a different nickname, by email. It was short and sweet and inviting. She responded immediately and we’ve been corresponding daily since.

We’re getting reacquainted. As we all know, people change over time. Life does that to a person. I’ve learned some things about this lovely woman that I would never have expected. For instance, she loves poetry and buys books of poetry every time she finds a poet that she can click with. She's happily used her time to garden since she retired a few years ago.

These are the kinds of things that I would have known if we could have communicated over those intervening years. We’ve lost time with each other. We’ve lost our connections. As we grow older, having family contemporaries becomes more difficult.

She is one of only three cousins of my age—within a year or so—on either side of my family. That’s a really small pool to draw from, and she’s the only relative that I know left on my mother’s side of the family. That pool just got dangerously small.

Why am I talking about all of this? It has to do with recognizing how fragile connections and communication really are. It focuses one’s attention on those bits of self that have been left behind; bits that impacted other people that one never expected. And, it allows for more examples of those seven degrees of separation that Chaos Theory is always shoving down our throats.

Remember I said that Pat loves poetry. I sent her a link to some of my published poems on the Soft Whispers site. She came back to me expressing her pleasure in a specific poem and told me how much it reminded her of her favorite poet, Gwen Frostic. She told me that she used to go to Gwen’s studio each year to get any new books of poetry that had come out since the last visit.

Now I’d never heard of that poet, but I remedied that with a Google search. Though deceased now, Gwen became an instant favorite of my own, as well. Look her up and see if you can figure out why. Her books are also still available on Amazon. Somehow I can see an order in my future.

I discovered a new poet, introduced to me by a cousin long estranged, reconnected with a much forgotten past, from a place I hadn’t lived in 26 years. I think that’s a good week’s work, don’t you?

I’m just trying to figure out what I’m going to discover this week. Until I find out, take care, all, and may blessings litter you path through life.

Claudsy