Secretary of State

in which I ramble through my day, which makes for boring blogging, but I think there's a point here somewhere ...

It was one of those low-key days where I didn’t ever quite do what I was meaning to, but most of it got done in spite of itself. Funny how that works.

Got up and instead of writing my morning pages, I re-worked my CV for a job opportunity that came up last night that I have mixed emotions about.

9:30 rolled around and it was time to go see Clayton. It looked miserable outside and I had no motivation at all. A different Bob (one I’m all too familiar with) would have blown it off, but I bundled up and walked to the gym where the punishment ensued.

Decided a relaxing steam would help me recover from the workout (he gave me my money’s worth), but the steamroom was very noisy with two old men blathering away in less-than soothing Arabic tongues. Rather than get really steamed by their annoying chatter, I opted for a long hot shower.

I knew if I went home, I’d probably just nap, so I wandered to a coffee shop. Opened my bag to get my morning pages notebook out (it was still morning, after all), but I’d apparently left on the nightstand so I ended up writing in my new “creative writing” only notebook. Oh well, writing is writing.

Read from a new book on creativity. Wondered why other people think I’m creative and I think I’ve got as much creativity as a popsicle stick. Turns out it's all about state and flow.

Chatted up a colleague about the new job opportunity and he confirmed the misgivings I was having about the position. Decided not to write it off, but to tread forward carefully.

Read more of the creativity book and it talked about how creative people instinctively know when ideas are good or not. Wondered if I was not loving the new job prospect because I was being instinctive/creative, or if I was just being afraid of the work. Hmmm..

Got blown off by my lunch date (that work thing does get in the way, doesn’t it?) so I wandered up the high street in search of spaghetti and meatballs. Don’t know why, it just sounded good.

My first-choice restaurant seemed too crowded, so I walked back down the high street in search of other options It was really cold and damp and gray. The creativity book had talked about state affecting creativity and you really couldn’t be creative unless you were in the proper state.

Spaghetti and meatballs would put me in a good state, I thought. So would a day at the beach … a nice warm, sunny beach. Out of the blue, well, the gray, had a thought that I haven’t had a good cry for awhile. Where’d that come from?

Ended up in a pub eating toad in hole, with the biggest Yorkshire pudding I’d ever seen. Realized it was the second day in a row I’ve had sausage for lunch. Assimilation or just unhealthy eating?

Finished reading The History of Love, and choked back tears for the last 15 pages. Fortunately I was sitting in the corner and I don’t think anybody realized. It was tender and sweet and heartbreaking and oh-so sad. I loved it.

Had this thought for the third time this week: It’s not so much that I want to write great things that make the reader laugh and cry at the same time … it’s that I want to have already written them.

Walked home in the chill, feeling a little tired and a little old, thinking about poor Leopold and his sad, lonely life, cried a little for him, and wondered if it’s normal for allegedly grown men to be weepy while quietly walking down the pavement on a wintry afternoon. I know I’d avert my eyes if I saw me coming. I wasn’t hysterical or anything, but still … I probably looked like a crazy person.

Got home, took that nap I’d been putting off for the past several hours, and then picked out the next books from the to-be-read shelf. I’ve got two: Fingersmith and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. It looks like I’ll be spending my upcoming afternoons with Victorian lesbians and Italian gigolos.

Perfect.

Now there’s a chicken roasting in the oven with, some could unsuccessfully argue, too much garlic.

It was a quiet, simple day. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have spaghetti and meatballs … with Mrs. Stone.

:: :: ::

So where's that point you mentioned at the beginning?

I guess it's that during most of my day, I thought I was having a really boring, uneventful, unproductive day. In a few months when I'm back in the swing of the work world, I'll look back and probably offer to pay big bucks to be able to just enjoy a day of doing (ostensibly) nothing. Oh, and it's good to have a plan, but you don't always have to do it in the order you thought you would. It all gets done when it's ready.