so, in another blink, about a week has passed since my last posting. in that time, the entire covid-19 thing has gotten increasingly serious (or rather, the state response has). we are now in shelter-in-place mode, and all nonessential businesses have closed up. that includes lynn's store, and, for that matter, most stores, aside from perhaps those selling groceries, or things like hardware and auto supplies. as far as school is concerned, we were supposed to be "working," but aside from constructing a packet for each of my students, there hasn't been all that much to do. i've tried to keep myself busy by doing yardwork, but the weather really hasn't been cooperating. actually, for two weeks now, we've been having truly dismal weather: a lot of wind, and a lot of rain. i've managed to set up the aquaponics system better. now, we actually have three motors pumping out of three fish tanks, and four grow beds (one of the fish tanks serves two grow beds). i don't have anything to plant in the third grow bed yet (the one from my classroom), but i hope to plant the zucchinis i managed to sprout from seed.
i had an insight of sorts (but of course all of these "insights" that i get are probably pretty temporary). it happened while i was weeding the yard. i must tell you that weeding my yard is an eternal, interminable task (one might also call it a chore). in the face of that task, i usually adopt a very scattered approach. that is, instead of focusing and directing my efforts on specific tasks, i tend to wander around the yard, doing my kwai chang thing by solving little problems everywhere i go. some might say it's not particularly productive, and it doesn't "accomplish" anything, but i think that that's part of the game here. from my experience, there's a cost of guilt whenever i push too hard at something. i don't know if guilt is exactly the right word for it, but that's how it feels. it's as though i were constructing a fiction by setting up this goal that i'm trying to accomplish, and the more i work at it, the more it seems that the fictitious nature (the "lying") just gets to me. it fills me with recriminations (although these originate, probably, from myself).
anyway, back to the insight. i started hearing the voices of neil gaiman and margaret atwood, voices of experienced writers, who said, among other things, that finishing things was essential. and that's when, aside from my scattered efforts, i made a decision to "stick to it." yes, i wasn't targeting anything specific, but i had committed myself to the task of cleaning up the yard, and didn't just back off when i encountered obstacles. instead, i kept moving on to the next task and the next task, and i eventually wore things down, like water eroding something hard and solid... i also started working on the nanowrimo website, and began writing for 1 hour every night. and because i had decided to write some of my short stories as plays, i had an easier time of it. i no longer got hung up in describing the setting or articulating the inner thoughts and motivations of characters. i just focused on dialogue and action. things seemed to move a lot better, and i was actually able to finish (of course "finish" is subjective and relative) "the backwards carp." now, i'm attacking the "kappa noodle" story, and i hope to finish it sometime soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment