I Am Being Productive…Honest.

WELL, HERE WE GO AGAIN. It is 6:30 AM. I have my coffee in front of me and my pen is in my hand…and I haven’t the foggiest idea of what comes next. I know that I should have glowing prose spilling from my brain onto the page. But, as I stare at the empty paper in front of me all I can think of is, “I’d rather be back in bed.”

It took me only five minutes to turn on my phone and check my overnight mail. Most of it was junk. There was one very nice note from a new reader praising a post from last week. That’s always a nice way to start the day. It is certainly better than having some disgruntled insomniac telling me how wrong I am about everything and that my writing style sucks like a ten year old Hoover.

Take a number and get in line. Our Complaint Dept. opens at 9 AM – after my coffee and meds.

Some days I think that the high point of my life is trying out a new pen. I go through pens like potato chips. I rarely write directly into the computer. I don’t like it. I don’t feel the connection with the words when I do that. I prefer to scribble away in a wide rule cheap notebook and then type it up into the machine. That also serves as an opportunity to do a rewrite, human spell-check, and a chance to really read it and perhaps decide to rip it and score two points as I toss it into the wastebasket across the room.

I have considered reading the newspaper already – as a way of pretending to myself that I was doing research, but reading the Terre Haute (That’s French for, “I before E, except after C”) newspaper is not all that informative. It’s more like trying to decipher a note written in Pidgin English. If I wanted that I would just subscribe to a paper from Papua-New Guinea.

After scrapping that idea I tried to leave a note for myself entitled “What I need to do today.” I gave up on that after

1. Drive home without killing myself or others.

That so depressed me that I stopped writing and scored a three point shot with the page from my notebook.

I actually do have a real “must do” chore for today. My wife, the lovely and eternally efficient, Dawn, ordered some items for her mother from Amazon. Unfortunately, they shipped it to us in Indiana instead of to her in Texas.

Oops!

Now we must wrestle with the box which is the size of a small Italian automobile and wedge it into the Toyota and take it to the UPS Store and send it to Texas. We can’t blame Amazon – the boo-boo was on our end, not theirs. After getting this box on its way I have no real errands or chores calling my name…other than to continue to breathe on a regular basis.

OK

I have been testing out a new pen this morning and I must give it my Seal of Approval. I hereby endorse the Paper Mate Ink Joy gel pen. It writes smoothly and with a wide enough line that I can actually read. Beyond that my set of criteria for pens is pretty simple:

1. Work
2. Be cheap
3. Not leak in my pocket

Now that I think about it – that’s pretty much the same list of expectations I have for myself on most days.

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