These are a few of my favorite things....tra la

Just some of the projects I have on needles at the moment. Note how many of them are fingering yarn. Remember what I told you about fingering yarn...and the size 1 or 2 needles. What does it say about me that I love this stuff and these needles and I AM INCAPABLE OF SUSTAINING INTEREST IN ANYTHING THAT TAKES MORE THAN 3 days? Do you think I am setting myself up for failure? Or, am I just trying to challenge myself, to move beyond my comfort zone--as I'm doing with this Blog 365? Pro or con, answer as you will, making sure to support all of your points with specifics. And no comma splices, goddamit!

In which I am called...

The siren call of Blog 365 is whining in my ear. Do it. Do it. Blog every day for a year, no matter what.

The hell you say, I say to the siren. Don't you remember NaBloPoMo of '07? You never made it past day six.

But the siren will not be silenced. Your motives in NaBloPoMo ’07 were impure; that is why you failed.

The siren, albeit he/she/it sounds an awful lot like Yoda is right. I did NaBloPoMo ‘07 not because I wanted to see if I could blog every day for a month—I’d already done that in ’06—but because (a) everyone else was doing it; (b) I wanted to be part of everyone else; (c) I had some idea it might improve my stats and thereby and fore my income (not to mention my ego), or (d) all of the above.

So what’s different now, Big Guy, I ask the siren. Who answers thusly:

I am not a guy, you silly twit. I am you, your inner voice, and if you are female, then so, thusly, am I.

And I sayeth: What’s different with Blog 365 is that it scares the shit out of you. To do something every day for a year—

Oh, no, I can’t I can’t. I can’t manage that kind of consistency. You know I can’t. I’ll fall down on the job. I’ll fuck up. I’ll get blocked and depressed and pissed off with the world.

Probably. But you know and I know that if you don’t work through this now, you never will. And at your age, my dear, how many chances will you have left. Not to mention that at your age, my dear, who the hell cares.

So now the siren is doing Rhett Butler, but frankly, he-she-it is right. I have a don’t-know-where-it-comes-from sense that this is a challenge I have to take on . I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I don’t know how bloodied and bowed—or triumphant—I’ll be at the end, but I’m signing on the dotted line, as it were. You’ll see something (or other) from me every day for the next year, this I swear.

Late Night Ambition; Day Time Lassitude

I get fired up at night. Plans are made, creative juices flow, and vows are taken to realize in the morningthe greatness thought of the night before. When I get up. Around 7 or so. If not earlier.

And then............in the morning, my bed becomes a huge float, bobbing along in the daytime sun. Molly pushes up against me (and sometimes on top of me) for her morning belly rub. Together we're a coccon, rubbing, dozing, bobbing along. In the daytime sun. Until--holy fuck!--it's much later than 7. It's probably later than 8. If I can rip myself from this womb before the big hand is on the 12 and little one on the 9, I consider myself successful. If not, well, so what. I can't remember the plans of the night before anyway. Or if I can, they seem silly, fruitless, or nigh on to impossible to achieve.

Last night, in an effort to harness at least one good thought, I took a pad and pencil to bed. Here's what I wrote:

• There are the thing I know and then there are the stories I tell myself about the things I know. Stories I imagine to be true, but cannot possibly say for sure. Stories in which sometimes I'm the victim and sometimes the hero.
• If you could see this page, you would know for certain, as I do, that one of the lasting effects of the cerebral aneurysm is that my penmanship sucks.
• I am ruled by inertia. And always have been.
• A friend tonight started spinning the story of D's and my early relationship. Her tale was so full of passion, and it made me laugh to think how little resemblance it bore to reality. But maybe her version is true. What do I know to say it's not? The stories we tell ourselves are, after all, simply narratives. They aren't histories."

This morning I sat down, as I do every morning, hands poised over keyboard, ready to write the Great American Blogpost. And this morning, as has happened every morning for a week or so, I am faced with the Great Meh! I can't get inspired. I don't feel clever or witty or even willing to try. I'm just not really that into it. My ambition is on the waning side of the tides. It'll come back. It always has. But until then--talk amongst yourselves. Enjoy the scenery. Eat an apple. Bake a scone.

Dream Interpretation 101

For the past several nights, I've had dreams in which food was an issue. Not the main issue, not the star of the A story line, but a B or C story line. The general scene is that I am whereever I am in the dream--last night I was in a line at a cafeteria, another night I was at a party--and there's a lot of food to be had. Food that I like, food that I've long wanted to try, food that looks tantalizingly, appetitizingly scrumptious. Mashed potatoes, real ones with butter and cream. Lobster claws and cassaroles of cassoulet. Devil's food cake with piles of marshmallowy icing. And those were just the dishes that I recognized.

When I woke up this morning, I started to wonder what was the meaning of all this food in my dreams. I didn't have to go very far to get an answer.

A table full of dishes that I like and want to try. A life full of activities that I like and want to try. Photography, drawing, knitting, collage, jewelry-making, blogging, fiction-writing...and that's just the arts end of my list.

Is this a problem?

Dreams are little whispers from our subconscious. When they repeat themselves, they become shouts. What should I be paying attention to?

Maybe the slight sense of being overwhelmed I feel at that dream table. If I'm to pick one thing to eat, what should it be?

I get that I need to pick something now. But does that mean I can't eventually eat it all?

Day Seventeen...

...and I'm definitely flagging. Not so much as this fellow or Stacy over at Jurgen Nation, who bailed from NaBloPoM in part because she realized that she was losing readers. But I find myself posting later and later in the day, and with much less zest or enthusiasm or whatever the hell you want to call it. It's a tough nut, writing a daily column. Ask anyone who does it. It really is a job, and since this month that's how I'm trying to treat By Jane--hey y'all, I gotta go to work.

I can't say if my numbers are down, because I just got my counter. But really, any above four would be an improvement. In terms of building an audience, I am working counter to all advice, which is to specialize in something. However, I truly, as my header states, have never been able to focus on one thing. My attention is multi-directional (doesn't that sound important). It's the reason, actually, that I became a journalist.

I never could decide what I wanted to be when I grew up--a doctor loomed large until I proved miserable at science. When that became clear, I was already in college and it seemed more important to be succeeding at a social life, rather than any profession. Not, you should imagine, that I was particularly good at that--my mouth has always proceeded me--but I tried, goodness me, did I ever.

My lack of focus was apparent in my choice of majors. I was for three years a Theatre Arts major and then in my last year, switched to Philosophy. I just kinda took the courses I was interested in, without any sense that they were supposed to prepare me for something. So I ended up with a bunch of English courses, a clot of Creative Writing courses (thank you, Monte Culver), all the Theatre courses I had amassed, plus the Philosophy I had to take for the major, and then there was that lump of Studio Art courses. I am nothing, if not well-rounded. That has served me well in life, even if it's meant I never have Fulfilled My Potential. Which depending on the day, either depresses me or pleases me.

Given that history, it is obvious I am incapable, no matter the well-meaning advice, of limiting this blog to one or two topics. I'd bore the living daylights out of myself, let alone the four of you who are faithful readers.

Odds & Ends, Bits & Piece, Thoughts & Meanderings

Today is one of those days where my mind is all over the place. Okay, more so than usual.

1. I just did a tour through my new and revised blog roll and learned that Dooce is probably picking the person of the year . Jeeze, why isn't that me? Okay, never mind that I'm years past the tall, blonde, beautiful stage--and Esquire's "Thirty Under Thirty" will never toll for me again. Still, I have opinions. Ain't that worth something?

--Sure, Jane, and who would you like to see as the person of the year?
--Um, um, um...
--Exactly.

2. M. Kennedy aka Mrs. Kennedy aka Fussy was a philosophy major in college too. And it did her every bit as much good as it did me.

3. I loves my little Counter. Not that I'm real clear on what the numbers mean. Every day I get to go and see where My Readers are from. Plano, Texas. Serbia & Montenegro. Atlanta, Georgia. Fleurieux-sur-l'Arbresle, France. Hey, guys, give a shout out for the smallness of the world!

4. Last night I had a dream in which I gave the following fully realized explanation of why I am not on a diet: Understanding the psychodynamics of overeating as I do, I know that artificially restricting my intake of calories is useless until I understand and deal with the issues that lead to the overeating.
Don't you just wish you were in my dreams.....!

5. Understanding dream analysis as I do....I realize that this dream is a reworking of yesterday's post on commitment.

6. Um, um, um....

Exactly.

On Writing - Advice to Myself

Yesterday's post was a neon sign flashing !!!Alert!!! Blockhole ahead!!! I hear the sirens and know that if I don't act now, I'll slide down that fog-filled tunnel into a very familiar place. So I'm picking at the knot, as it were, of my writing issues.

Two words came to me yesterday after I posted, and I was trying to figure out what was different when the words and ideas flowed. Commitment....Courage. When the writing is going well, I am committed to whatever it is I'm working on. And when I'm committed, I have the courage to say it my way, willy nilly of censors in my head.

Courage can be forced, I think. It can be as chain mail that one puts on, an act that enables one to go into battle. But commitment? How is it possible to make a grim determination to be committed? I must, I must, I must increase my...commitment. This is what I've done in the past, stayed at the computer, glued myself to the seat, hoping to break through. I can't bear to go through that again. It only works intermittantly, and it leaves me feeling such a failure.

So, how else to get 'round this commitment issue. Are there breathing exercises I can do? Yoga, perhaps? I've tried the gamut, it seems to me. I've done Morning Pages from The Artist's Way and zen sitting from Writing Down the Bones. I've taken Bird by Bird as my mantra, used it as a screen saver, in fact. They all work as well as they work, which is to say that they can't infuse commitment. It has to be there or the writing just fizzles out like a day old soda.

Or--can it be that one can fake commitment until it's real? Is it possible to commit intellectually and wait for the emotion to follow? Isn't this how arranged marriages work? Isn't this actually where the grit and hard work of any relationship lies?

I'm still trying to figure this out...