My lack of focus is particularly frustrating lately. I have always flitted from one thing to another in life, Scott will attest to that. But, frankly, I would really love to get one thing right and stick to it and focus on it and make it work. Writing is that one thing and I know it. I always come back to it over and over again,... it's just I get bored with it and find myself attracted to other things. Big projects are too much for me, they're daunting, overwhelming,... that's why I adore writing greeting cards. They're short, sweet, sentimental and pretty - unlike me,... my height is decidedly average and I don't look anywhere as cute as a greeting card,... the only day anyone could ever have accused me of looking pretty was my wedding day and that was because I had a team of stylists 'working on my look'.
[sigh]
I do qualify on the sweet and sentimental aspects, though. When I studied floristry (many moons ago) everyone in the class could always pick my arrangements out of a roomful because mine would be the one with the bow in it. For some reason I could never arrange flowers without placing a bow in there somewhere, just as I can never give a gift without tying it in ribbon. If there's no card, it's naked. These are just standards I place on myself,... I have never expected this from others.
I got on this computer today wanting to pour my heart out and sort out my thoughts. Unfortunately, I'm back to the struggle I have every time I write at the computer and not by hand,.... I get stuck sitting staring at the screen. My ideas come out stilted and awkward. There is no flow. Frankly, the flow is the one thing I love about writing. I find myself sitting there, my breathing slow and relaxed, my mind a thousand miles away, composing words of beauty while my hand and my critical left brain are busy forming letters on the page. It's a strategy to engage the critic, to distract it,.... but typing on the computer doesn't do it for me. For a start, I type fast enough to keep up with most of my thoughts, so my critic doesn't need to sit there telling me to dot my i's and lower case j's. So it interferes with my thought processes and I might as well be standing in front of my grade nine classroom naked, citing Shakespeare and shaking like jelly. This is not the literary escapism I fell in love with about that same time. Ugh.
I'm going to rant to my notebook. If you're lucky you'll read a polished edit of it one day,... but then again, maybe not.
[sigh]
Stupid computer.
