Awards are pleasant things, and are given for many things, including to adults for perfect attendance, as I found out recently. Being awarded something is a pleasant and exciting concept. It intrigued me enough that I was willing to waste some time on it with Google. I wanted to know when the first award was awarded.
Today, I hopped on my stationary bike, and while I was pedaling away, I read some of a book I had checked out a month or so ago and kept procrastinating reading, ‘The Fall of Berlin, 1945′.
Because of my regrettable habit of procrastinating, I have forgotten the reason I checked out this book. It is buried in the mists of time, but the book remains, silently reprimanding me with the legions of the dead soldiers of the Red Army, the Third Reich, and the residents of Berlin, many of whom did not vote for Hitler, and didn’t like the Nazis being in power. See? I have learned something from the regrettably few pages I have read.
As writers, or athletes, or painters, or anything else, we are always striving to be the best, but let’s face it, being the worst can really work for us. If they can ignore the best directors, or actors, or movies for an Oscar nod, as they have done this year, then we are in good company. ‘They’ also ignore a great many other people who are involved in actual productive and valuable work.
Forging friendships shouldn’t be hard. We all know, perhaps may even be, one of those paragons of virtue who are kind, compassionate, and helpful, and have a flashy personality to boot. Maybe even a flashy personality who likes to wear boots.
Most of us love those people. Not everyone does, because some people are just miserable, and hate all kind, compassionate, flashy, boot-wearing paragons, most notably those who are arch-enemies and nemeses (the plural form of nemesis, an arch-rival) of superheroes and urban legends. I’ve always thought how interesting life would be with your very own arch-enemy, or nemesis. If anyone ever doubted their own importance in the world, they could rest assured of their value by whether they keep a superhero up at night with their shenanigans.
I have a slew of titles saved which have no stories. These titles look so forlorn, so homeless, like unmoored dinghies bobbing on choppy literary waters, waiting for a safe plot in which to berth.
Handwriting was very normal at one time. Typing was the only subject in school in which I received a ‘D’, but I seem to remember we had to take it. Some people will laugh at that, I’m sure. Especially those people who type 95 wpm with no errors. Those people are what I like to call over-achieving braggarts. I never could break the 45 wpm typing barrier, but where my handwriting used to be clear as a bell, now I can barely read it.
As I was blogging, meaning looking for inspiration, I read about a scale that is a kinder, gentler device that measures your body weight. It is called a Quantum scale and only tells you how many pounds you’ve lost, keeping you blissfully in the dark about what you currently weigh.
I just finished a book titled ‘The Bachelor and the Baby’ by Gwen Davenport. Probably few people out there have heard of her, or if they have their numbers are few. The shelves are full of books like this. When I realize just how quickly books become old, stars become forgotten, it puts everything in perspective. There is no guarantee that anything any of us write will be remembered, or read. I heard an author speak of this on NPR once; he said that even if we did become famous posthumously, we will certainly never know. And if we become famous and read before we die, will we continue to be read by anyone?
I am a proud beneficiary of self-publishing. I say that with a touch of sarcasm; since I am too lazy to send my manuscripts to a zillion publishers, and I am not a famous person who writes an immediately successful children’s book, I took advantage of self-publishing. I think my writing is pretty decent, but I have no assurance that a traditional publisher will feel the same way about it. The hell with them. I’ve got Kindle and Smashwords.
I once learned that paramedics, and cops, despite their training and good intentions, don’t have to rush in where angels fear to tread. It is in their contracts or something, that if they don’t feel safe, they can let you lie there like a plucked chicken, waiting for the roaster.
