Two reasons for this; the first is that I'm not used to paying attention to little things that I might blog about - I stopped doing that years ago (I can't believe that's actually true!). Things certainly happen, wonderful little things that might make a couple of nice entries, but I miss them. I have to work on that.
The second reason is that boring old reason - "I've been busy."
True. But there's always time for writing, or at least I like to try to think so, and tell myself that.
So today is an exercise in appreciating, and blogging about, the little things.
Today there were two little things, two wonderful little things! (Actually there were many more than two, now that I think about it, but I am only going to tell you about those two. You have to guess and wonder about the others.)
The first happened this morning, at work, when a little girl named Rose presented me with the pastry bag that her cookie had been in. She had written her name on it, and her nanny had taken the rest of her dictation down, to this effect:
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This might go without saying, but just in case - this made my morning! And now it's on my bulletin board.
The other wonderful little thing that happened is... I made a cake!
I used to bake all the time, but living in a communal house where the kitchen is usually considerably less than clean, I avoid cooking all the time.
One of the things that has happened to me in the past month is that I have been trying to figure out what I like. What are my hobbies? I know I love to read and I love to write, but I like those things so much that I have turned them into work, which results in a bit less enjoyment than they might otherwise provide. I guess that's what happens if you ever want to call yourself a writer.
This is not to say that I don't enjoy reading and writing; it makes me very happy, and I go back and forth between fun reading and something like work reading.
But it would be nice to find those things that I truly love that are just that: hobbies.
On Saturday, someone asked me if I cooked much. I said I didn't, explained about the communal kitchen situation, and added, "which is sad, because I really love to cook, I just never do it anymore."
And a few hours later that statement struck me as significant, and I realized I was depriving myself of one of my favorite pastimes, and resolved to brave my messy kitchen and cook more.
2 comments:
You can come indulge your hobby at your parents' house anytime you like (for a small pastry payment). And who knows...maybe if you start baking in your own house the kitchen will start being a bit cleaner. Worth a try!
"I like you and I like you" must be about the nicest thing to say there is. The nicest way to say it, too. It's a little Gertrude Steinlike. It's so simple and direct, and full.
It just occurred to me to blog commonplaces from time to time. Passages I particularly like when I'm reading. It's so easy: snap a photo with your iPhone, run it through Image to Text; paste it into your blog. Like this:
"Queneau's most quoted remark is probably his declaration, in the 1937 novel Odile, that the true artist is never inspired—he is always inspired. As a counterpoint, recall his dictum from an early Oulipo meeting that there is no literature but voluntary literature, and this begins to come into focus: meaning, such as it is, doesn't exist on its own. Someone has to find it, midwife it, present it to the world as more than just a coincidence. The real artist is always inspired not because he creates things that are unmistakably intentional, but because he is sensitive to the sorts of things that at first seem like accidents. He replicates them on his own terms, as an expression of his own preoccupations or sensibilities or desires, or he just sticks them on a gallery wall and calls them art; even when he's wrong, he's right." (Daniel Levin Becker, Many Subtle Channels, pp 297-8)
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