I Need Energy More Than Time

Daily writing prompt

Do you need time?

Do I need time? I’ll be honest — I don’t think I need more time. I would be really efficient with my time I had if I had more energy.

Right now, I’ve gotten up a half-hour ago. I just got done with breakfast and I am sitting at my computer writing. But am I awake? No, I feel like I could drowse off to sleep any minute. I have fallen asleep sitting at my computer.

Too many times I feel like my ‘get up and go’ has got up and went. If I had more energy, I would surf the internet less and do more. I would spend part of today going through my books for sale to prepare for the authors fair at the library in early December. I would get my daily words done with no recalcitrance. I would not have the overwhelming desire to go back to bed.

As I say this, I realize I don’t want that much more energy. I have bipolar disorder (type II). It’s under control, but it hasn’t always been. I had a lot of energy when in my hypomanic states. I got no more done because I couldn’t focus, but I started a lot of projects. So maybe I don’t want more energy. Or at least not much more.

First Snow — A Lost Holiday

Daily writing prompt

Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.

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I’ve already invented a holiday, although I don’t really celebrate it any more, because as I’ve gotten older, it’s become harder to get anyone to buy into it. Also, some years I don’t get to celebrate it at all, or not until late, for reasons you will see in a bit.

My holiday is called First Snow. And it’s exactly what it sounds like — it celebrates the first substantial snow of the season. That’s defined as enough snowfall that the grass is mostly obscured and it will still be there in the morning. Flurries aren’t enough if they don’t cover the ground.

To celebrate it, one must have snow. The celebrants can do this either indoors with a bowl of snow or outdoors. When I was younger and more durable, my friends and I would sit outside in the snow.

One must also have a mug of something to drink. This has varied over the years from hot chocolate to blackberry brandy. The idea is to pass around the mug and drink toasts, and the first toast is always “To the snow”. As the toasts go on, it’s harder to find things to drink toasts to, and that’s part of the point, to get creative with the toasts. When the mug is empty, it’s refilled until the participants run out of toasts. The last swallow of each mug is emptied into the ground. The idea is not to get drunk, so generally alcoholic first snows don’t last as long.

Like I said, I don’t celebrate this anymore. As an older adult, I have grown impatient with the need to figure out whether there’s enough snow, and too shy to ask others to inconvenience themselves on a busy evening. It’s an ill-advised holiday when one is no longer a student with the semi-communal life of unmarried friends. But while it lasted, it was a bonding experience with my friends.

Get Off My Lawn

My mother once said that ‘growing old was hell.’ I admit, my knees and hip are giving me trouble, and I’m not as flexible as I used to be, and I would welcome a good nap right now, but hell? It’s too interesting to be hell.

I find myself saying and doing all the things I said I wouldn’t when I was younger. Reminisce about old technologies and the music I loved as a child? Check. Complain that things aren’t like they used to be? Check. Complain about aches and pains? Check. I have, to my credit, never said “Get off my lawn” except in jest.

There are things I wanted to do when I was younger that I would not be caught dead doing today: skydiving, going on a rollercoaster, looking down great heights. Now I can’t bring myself to do these.

I’m less spontaneous than I used to be, more deliberate. More patient, which surprises me, because I’ve never been a patient person. Maybe it’s because I have survived everything.

Having survived everything, I have advice for the younger generation, something else I never thought I’d have: Don’t worry about aging. It’s not that bad.

A Chance of Tornadoes

Today is going to be a bad weather day in Maryville, according to the weather forecast. We are at a 10% chance for bad weather, and there may even be tornadoes in the mix. Tornadoes? It’s almost November!

Photo by Ralph W. lambrecht on Pexels.com

I guess some people call tornadoes ‘cyclones’; pretty much the same thing. A severely hazardous storm typified by a wind vortex. The standard operating procedure for a tornado is to go to the basement, for presumably the walls in the basement don’t collapse on you. There’s also less danger of being hit by flying glass. If you don’t have a basement, choose an internal room on the first floor without windows, which is often a bathroom.

I remember life before extremely accurate weather forecasting. We generally didn’t know a tornado was passing by until the tornado showed up, and then the civil defense warning would be broadcast on our tv. Then the siren would go off (this was usually the siren summoning our volunteer firefighters to an incident.)

Today, we have a fire siren in town to warn us if a tornado is imminent. But we also have our weather forecasts, our phones and the watch/warning system. We can prepare a day in advance; I know the expected time for severe storms and I can plan accordingly.

It’s interesting to look at today and reminisce about how life has changed. I guess that makes me an old person (*sigh*).

Coffee in the Morning

I wake up to the best coffee in town. We buy green (unroasted) beans, and my husband roasts them. Today’s are fresh-roasted, having been roasted the previous afternoon. We have a fancy coffee machine that we bought used (because we’re cheap) and so our coffee is better than any cup we could get in town.

This is not to mean all of our coffee is excellent. Sometimes a bad bean gets through, and the coffee for the morning tastes like potatoes or wet swamp. (This happens so very seldom, only once or twice in my recollection, and we’ve been doing this for over 10 years). Sometimes we don’t roast dark enough, and the coffee tastes green (again, this happens very seldom). More often, we find that a coffee, although good, not quite to our tastes. For this, we have invented our coffee rating system:

Grandma has rejected this coffee.
Grandma drinks this kind of coffee.
Grandma should be drinking this coffee.
Grandma called, and she wants you to bring a dime bag so she can groove over this coffee.

In other words, 3 is a high recommendation and four is a really high recommendation, if you know what I mean.

We like big flavorful coffees over here. Not the kind you get at the grocery store, and seldom the kind you get at a coffeehouse (coffeehouses’ coffee often tastes sour because of overextracting or being held too long). Today’s coffee has a lingering sweet aftertaste, like rice syrup and molasses. No complaints here.

So I’m done with my coffee and rather caffeinated for the day. Which I really need, because it’s a Monday.

Random Thoughts

I asked Chloe the cat whether she was going to help me find a topic for today’s blog. She said “Meow” and jumped off the couch, which I took to mean “No.” So I’m on my own for today’s topic.

I’m listening to the “Always Sunday” chill mix on iTunes. It has 35 hours of music on it, which means more hours than Sunday has. I’m impressed with someone’s attention span, that’s for sure. It makes my thirteen hundred words a day look much less impressive.

Even though I have grading to do, I will not start it till Monday. I am jealously guarding my weekend, and as I already gave up part of it for a school function yesterday, I feel justified. I might regret it somewhere toward Tuesday, but I need this weekend for myself.

This is my 84th day straight of posting on this blog. I thought it was more, but apparently the timer had a glitch in it and finally righted itself. Or it’s wrong now and I have more posts than that.

Coffee and chill makes for a perfect Sunday.

Torturing a Metaphor

Blank notepad on a wooden surface. Top view

I wanted to write about the blank page I face every morning, but I was afraid it would devolve into some inspiration glurge about how every day is a blank page that we write on, and we have the choice of what to write on it every day. A little cliche for me to start the morning with.

Every day is not a blank page. It’s another page in a never-ending story, complete with themes, plots, and foreshadowing. The theme for this week has been “People at work do nice things”, which has been almost magical. One of the plots has been “Lauren is starting to write again, but slowly.” We often do not see the shape of the story except in retrospect, which makes the metaphor very limited.

I don’t like the page as a metaphor for life, unless it’s one of those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, where your life branches when you commit to a certain activity. With unlimited choices, there are infinite branches. Sometimes the plot doesn’t make sense, even in retrospect.

I’ve tortured this metaphor enough. Time to write the story of my day.

Slow Progress

I’ve been writing, but slowly. I’ve gotten an average of 1400 words a day for the last three days, which is much less than my previous goal of 2000. But I’m writing, which is better than I had been doing for a while.

I’m not sure why the flow isn’t there. I’d like to blame the book and the fact that it’s coming out too compact, but I think it might be me. I still worry about whether I am still a writer or another phase of my life is coming in. I have been writing for over 10 years. What would I do with myself if I were not writing? Probably nap a lot. I feel like I would nap really well. Can I be a professional napper?

I know I’ve talked this way before and come out of it. I also know I’ve been much more prolific with my quick-reading books than I have had any right to be. Should I panic? Probably not.

Basic Personal Finance

Daily writing prompt

What’s something you believe everyone should know.

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I believe everyone should take a basic personal finance course.

What topics should the personal finance class cover? Budgeting, decision-making, banking choices, the earning of interest, credit use, and consumer insurance. Investing can wait, although a basic class in that might also be welcome.

The sellers of financial services don’t have our best interests in mind. Banks can offer accounts with quickly compounding penalties for overdrawn accounts, and other hidden fees. Lenders can be predatory, with high interest rates and other fine print. Insurance agents sometimes offer life insurance policies that are more suited to make money for the company than serving the consumer.

Every consumer should be an informed consumer. It’s the only way to navigate the financial services market and win.