Capping the afternoon...

I write more often now. But I always have problems with that. Or rather, I think I had this problem with writing after I stopped programming.

Writing has always been second nature to me. I can write. I can rewrite till the cows come home. I don’t think I was ever satisfied with what I wrote. At some point I learned to stop rewriting. Or at least to give the piece I’d written some time, before I have a go and rewrite it.

That’s even before I ask help with the editing. But let’s not go there.

It all boils down to how I write. I write in the same way that I program. I program in a zone. I keep plugging at a program till I get it, and then I enter the zone. When that happens, I forget everything. I write code faster, I do background programming at the back of my head. I solve programming problems while I sleep. I really zone out.

However, before that happens, there is that slow build-up. Small pieces come into place. A thought here, a pencil there, a piece of comment kept in a file within easy reach, these and more things happen. It seems that I would be doing nothing for a long time, and then it just happens. The slow build up leads to an imperceptible tipping point. And then it’s all downhill from there. I feel like I have to keep doing things faster and faster in order to keep ahead of an avalanche I’ve unleashed.

In a way, that’s what happened and caused me to burn out once, long ago. That feeling never leaves. I keep trying to look behind me to see if I’m on the verge of a burnout. Sometimes I see it. Most times, I don’t.

That’s how I write. I get a slow start. Starting a diesel engine in a cold deep winter night has nothing to compare to what I go through before I can really get into a writing zone. It’s when I really have to write, that I write things off the top of my head. These are like finger exercises. Or foreplay, if you will. I have to get beyond the first one BEFORE I really get going.

Once in the zone, it’s just too bad, but I have to squeeze it, make it go for all it’s worth, and then again, and again. Till I drop or the bell rings to signify that time’s up.

Starting to write while staring a blank page is totally frightening.

candytomysoul:

But by those who also heal the bleeding.

I have a problem with the “like” button. What if I don’t like it but want to tell whoever owns the post that I don’t like it? Shouldn’t I have the right to do that? Shouldn’t the power to choose be kept in my hands? Without the “unlike” button, there’s no way to disagree without having to explain yourself.

Because in the long run, most times, you just don’t like something and don’t really need to explain it.

Worse, explaining why would just be an exercise in putting your foot in your mouth.

And for the record, I hate this post!

shessofuckedinthehead:

its strange, but when you dread a certain day for the reminding of painful things that have happened, the closer and closer the day gets the more you realize its not the actual day that is the worst, that feels the worst.

its the getting to that day..its actually all the days leading up to that day that start to form months and years, and you see that one day is really small in the face of all that time.

the date is just an arbitrary calendar day, a “hall-pass” to mourn outloud.

I have not had a good subject for my photography. In times like these, I am very much tempted to take pictures of cats.

Strictly speaking, I am not a cat person. It’s not that we didn’t have any cats before. In fact, we had a black (a pure black) cat as a pet when I was in my pre-teens. It was a stray cat. I think I first met the cat while I was woolgathering on the roof of the work shed which was behind our house. That was the only time we really had a cat as a pet. When I say pet, I mean that he was allowed inside our house. Even the dogs we had as pets were not allowed inside the house.

And on to the present, the cats that we have in our environs are all strays. I don’t think any of our neighbors have house cats. There are a few which crawl into the lot, including one or two which sleep in the dirty kitchen and atop the shoe cabinet.

I’ve thought of taking pictures of these cats while they’re sleeping, or at least, while they’re on top of the cabinets. These are ballsy creatures. If you go to the dirty kitchen after midnight, and you see one of these strays on top of the cabinets or the fridge, these cats have a nasty habit of just looking hard at you. It’s not like they were daring you to do anything. More like they allow me to go about my business and they’ll not move while I do whatever it is I have to do. They’ll look hard at you eye to eye and not care a whit what you think.

But yes, I don’t really do cat photography, but these cats are all over the neighborhood.

Just in case I do decide to take pictures of these creatures, I think I’d want to capture them in mid-stride, or while in the air pouncing. So far, the pictures I have taken of them have been of very languid pictures, with the cold hard I-don’t-care-who-you-are stare and the belly to floor resting type of poses.

When I am really, really bored, I’ll start thinking of taking cat pictures.