Sunday, June 23, 2013

It's Sad When You Have to Read Your Blog to Find Out What You've Been Doing

It's Sunday morning before Mass, and I'm blogging.

The writing life has not been part of my existence for the last few weeks.  I've been in graphic design mode.  I designed my darling niece Jane's wedding invites from top to bottom. No longer are brides content with an engraved invitation on white or cream linen stock.  They want color and all paper goods associated with the happy event coordinated.  It all started with the lovely shade of green the bridesmaids will be wearing. My niece sent me an email with a few Pinterest ideas which fleshed out the "vibe" she wanted in the design, along with her preferred fonts.  Before I knew it, I was learning about Pantone hues and belly bands and envelope liners. I was in contact with vendors for envelopes and specialty paper and teeny weeny tissues. I had to relearn calligraphy, but that is like riding a bicycle.  After two sheets of practice addresses, one would never know the last time I wielded a cartridge pen was fifteen years ago and I only ruined six envelopes with blobs and other mistakes.

The design my niece selected is so ... her.  When my sister, her mom, saw it, that's exactly what she said ... "That is so Jane!"  Mission accomplished on my end of things.  The invitations were all mailed from the Bradley Airport Post Office yesterday, so in a couple of weeks I will post the design on my graphic design blog.  I also designed some graduation cards for Greeting Card Universe, some Fourth of July cards and a series featuring the "Keep Calm" meme as it applies to boiled lobsters.

But I haven't been writing much.  I missed the deadline for the WIP It Blog Fest.  I had no new WIP material to present to my writer's group last week, either.  I did write two possible entries for WRiTE CLUB 2013, and spent a couple hours today working on the one I think will appeal to the voters (which is everyone on the Linky List) before I sent it in, but I feel ... rusty.

I thought to myself ... what the heck have I been doing?  Where did I lose so much time?  Then, I looked at my last blog entry and realized, "Oh, I went to Houston and was gone for five days."

How could I forget I did that?  My brother, Sam, is recovering from a burst appendix and my sister and I flew down on US Airways Buddy Passes.  We ended up spending an overnight in Charlotte, NC and got to Houston at 9:30 the next night. We didn't tell him we were coming so as not to disappoint him if we couldn't get there.  He was so glad to see us, and we were so glad to see him.  It was like an earthly foreshadowing of the "Angel of Happy Meetings" Prayer.

Then we spent the next three days cooking, going to doctor's appointments and watching the most appalling stuff on television.  If TV is the harbinger of things to come, the apocalypse cannot be far off. We spent a good deal of time visiting and talking and that felt as if we were doing what we were meant to do.
Fiesta Supermarket, Houston TX ... my new favorite grocery store with the most amazing produce section ... ever!


So, after seeing my blog and realizing that I had traveled, it occurred to me that if I am not writing on a daily basis, other faculties begin to shrivel.  Capacity for memory.  Easy grasp of ideas.  Patience with an unfolding story. Empathetic observation of character.  My life, little by slowly, becomes digital. A blog post here, a YouTube video there.  I don't even do household chores in a cohesive, satisfyingly analog way. I dart about, doing everything marginally.  That's it ... my life is meant to be lived in the body of the story and I'm scrawling out on the margins..

As soon as this post is up, I'm spending the rest of my pre-bed cup of tea visiting with my WIP. One of my goals this summer is to finish the first draft (and, yes ... summer goes all the way through September 20th.) I am going to invest in a notebook, something I can take everywhere along with my pens and paper.

I started this blog post at 9:00 a.m. and it's now 10:48 p.m.  I've come back to it on four separate occasions, and now it's done. A peaceful night to all, and if you're a writer reading this, I wish for you the writer's life in the days to come.  I wish it for me, too.

6 comments:

  1. Rosemary, we need to get together sometime and just talk writing! After a few months of writing doldrums (um...I'm going to blame first trimester pregnancy, but it's mostly my fault), I'm finally back into the write-every-morning routine. And it's amazing how that makes the rest of my life fall into place. Just knowing I have my minimum 1000 words done makes it easier to focus on everything else.

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  2. Oh, dear ... there is something about writing that grounds us, doesn't it? A notebook is essential. But I also think the other creative efforts can feed our writer's brain. May your ink flow onto the pages of your notebook ...

    Faith, do you and Rosemary live close by? I'm jealous.

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  3. "That's it ... my life is meant to be lived in the body of the story and I'm scrawling out on the margins.." -

    what a great line, and truth, self-observation

    hope you enjoy houston, i grew up there (lots of family still there) but am in austin right now (with some stops in galveston, vermont, and paris along the way :-) )

    best wishes for you on your work!

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    1. How kind of you to drop by adan (via WU, I'm guessing?) I didn't see much of Houston (saw quite a bit of Memorial Herman SW) but what I did see was terrific! My sister-in-law is a Houston public school teacher and speaks Spanish fluently so we had a fabulous time at Fiesta. I always wondered ... do people with a Southern drawl also have that drawl in Spanish?

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    2. there is, to my ear, an audible bleed over ;-)

      though many people in texas would say the accent isn't southern, and even parts of texas differ slightly in their drawl, lol!

      and yes, from WU, hope all goes well with your brother

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  4. MOM! Write a blog post please. It's been weeeeeeeeeks.

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