... the twenty-first night of September?
Literally a BANG! That's how the writing year started. So gung-ho! Much to do and say.
And I hit the blog wall early, in March sometime.
Meanwhile, my paper journal was going strong. Without fail, a page every morning. Almost robotic. Up at 6 AM, write for about 30 minutes. Then off to the bike and treadmill.
I just checked. The 17th of March was my last entry. Almost six months ago. Not even September.
My will to write anything just is vanished. There was lots of stuff to say, but I just didn't have the willpower to write it down. I kept it swimming around my noggin.
READING INSTEAD.
So I took up reading. And my reading life was excellent. A couple of books a month, borrowed from the Toronto Public Library. Mostly mystery books. Ken Follett. David Baldacci. James Patterson. Wayne Dyer and Rick Rubin. And now I'm really into Karin Slaughter. I'll be digesting her murder mysteries for a while.
The James Patterson, David Baldacci series were really good. You can anticipate their writing style. And I hooked onto those two late last year. They pulled me through August 2024 right up into March.
Waking up. Writing. Exercise. Reading. And Repeat.
That was the prescription and it got too routine. Too fixed. I got nervous when I didn't get on the treadmill, or the elliptical.
Sadly my treadmill gave up early this year. And so I've stripped it down to its bare bones. I'd even bought spare replacement parts for it since the belt was hanging loose.
BIKING
And my motorcycle's been crying for attention too. I sold my Kibo K250, for almost the same price I got it a couple of months before the price dropped. And then sunk 1.25M shillings into a KTM 390 Adventure. Calling it an Adventure is a bit of a stretch. I've already dropped the bike at least three times. And twice in the driveway.
The bike is a joy to ride on the highway, but it's slippery on dirt roads. Must be the stock tyres which I'm getting changed out tomorrow - Monday 8th September. And then I'll try my hand at dirt again. Boldly.
The bike does not like doing groceries. It was built for distance and so later this year, I may have to stretch it out a bit, head over to Namanga on the Kenya/Tanzania border. Perhaps around Mt. Kenya - which I did with the Kibo should be fun. And then, the awesome trip to Mombasa. This time fearlessly on Mombasa Road.
WORK
And then there's work. It there, chugging along with people chugging right along with it. There's been some progress, but there could be more.
If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. No truer words were ever spoken. Because if I don't initiate programs, then the status quo will slip into the status prehistoric. And I'm not joking.
DRAWING
I have tons of tech now. I can't count the number of headphones, both over-ear, on-ear, closed earbuds, open earbuds, bone conducting earphones. And I have a BOOX Note Air 3 black and white e ink tablet as well as a Supernote e ink tablet. And a shiny new iPad Air 11-inch. The one with the M3 chip inside. This time I did not get the Magic Keyboard which I used very little of when I had the iPad Pro.
But I'm enjoying Adobe Fresco. It may overtake Sketchbook, which has been my sketching buddy for a really long time.
I find that I enjoy concentrated detailed work. This reminds me of nights spent in the university's studio, hashing, drawing details on vellum, inking over pencil for hours. Drawing perspectives accurately. Setting them up, pencilling them in. Finally inking and shading.
Nowadays, I sketch for about five minutes and I'm tired that the drawing isn't even finished yet.
Must be the same with writing. Write, write, write, write and then get lost. Don't know where I started, and don't know where I'll end up.
BACK TO ... READING
The Wayne Dyer books were instructive. I knew, or rather I sensed, the content. Taking control of one's life. Stop being a victim. These are bold statements, but practically meaningless without the experiential component.
Nobody's really in control of their own lives. There's the law. The police. Your family. Your own body works against you. But the insight in the book Erroneous Zones had to do with how feelings arise from thought. And how thoughts arise from words.
And how we make up our own feelings, separate from what reality is.
Finally, how FEAR is the result of the entire process.
His other book, Pulling Your Own Strings, focused on a similar theme. Being a victim.
The end of all that is fear. Not the fear of being killed, or being maimed, or being hurt. But the fear of ridicule, of condemnation, of being ignored. The fear of being made a nobody. Worse than being hurt physically.
I heard a Maya Angelou's piece on never getting angry or bothered.
Again, words, but one thing stood out. A simple sentence that applied seems to make a lot of sense.
It's not about ME. It's about THEM.
When someone's being rude, offensive, loud, dismissive, objectionable, obnoxious, angry or whatever. It has nothing to do with me.
Maya Angelou makes a distinction between reacting and responding. When you react, you didn't think. You allowed your fear to take over. When you respond, you waited. Took a breath. Turned the words back to the speaker. And the thought did not develop into a feeling.
LIVING MINUTE BY MINUTE
The summary of all of this apathy, all of this lethargy, the pointlessness of it all, and seemingly endless humdrum of the same thing over and over again, to the point of mindlessness is that each minute needs special attention.
Like running a marathon. I know that thinking about the start line at the beginning of the race is not a useful thought. We're told to concentrate on the next step and get that working.
There are too many things unfinished that need to get done. But the scope of all of them seems too daunting to start any of them. I cannot see where I'm supposed to be going, or how to start. What do I pick up first, and what do I do with it.
Past failures come back to mind. Remember when you tried this, it didn't work. What makes you think it will work this time?
The point is to stop worrying about what will happen. If you stop in the middle, confused, then you stop.
Print the tax papers. Get the broom and start in one corner. Open the page and write a few lines.
Like what I did this morning. Who knows, it may go somewhere.