I tried freelance writing a few years ago, and discovered that one sure way to turn off my writing energy was to apply a deadline. Tell me that I have to have something written and ready by a week from Thursday at 3pm, and regardless of my earnest intentions my muse hears, “You’ve got 6-1/2 days to stress yourself out over this before flailing around and finally sitting down to do it at 12:52pm next Thursday.”
So, I’m going to try and get something written and entered here every week, but I’m not going to stress myself over it. Can’t swear the subject matter will always or even ever be profound or entertaining, but perhaps I will come up with something amusing or interesting from time to time. I’ll keep the entries fairly short, for the sake of all of our attention spans.
This week, I’m writing while doing laundry. I love the phrase “doing laundry,” because it sounds like an activity when it’s mostly sitting around and waiting. “I’m doing laundry” sounds a lot better when answering a text asking what I’m up to, than it does to say that I’m sitting in my basement in front of the computer imitating a vegetable with eyes, while the clothes washing equipment drones in the background.
Funny thing about laundry, it requires a large block of time to be set aside in order to spend a very little bit of that time doing anything to accomplish the goal of clean clothing. Gather and sort, load machine, wait. Unload machine, move clothes to dryer or hanger, wait. Unload dryer and hang or fold clothing, wait. Repeat with subsequent loads until finished. So now, when I meet my friends for breakfast tomorrow and they ask me what I did today, I can say that I spent the morning doing laundry, when I’ve really just been sitting around in my sleeping shorts, playing on the computer and waiting for the next 3 minute burst of activity.
I’ll see y’all here next week.
Maybe.