Do everything

That post yesterday wasn’t really about writing.

Well, it was about writing.

But it wasn’t just about writing.

It’s about everything or anything that you want to do.  If you want to be a writer or artist or plumber or the best flapjack flipper in Framingham, then write, paint/sculpt/sew/stitch/create, plumb and flip.

Well, for that last one you’d have to move to Framingham, unless you already live there, then just start flipping.

Write the darn thing

A few days ago I saw a book described on-line.  Let’s just say that the plot was one of the least reasonable ones that I have seen in a long time.  I have to admit that my first thought was who comes up with an idea like this followed by who publishes something like this?

It is the kind of thing to evoke horror: They’ll publish that but not my book!?!?  or  Heck if they’ll publish that they’ll publish anything – maybe I should write a book.

Then I realized that this book was targeted to a very specific subset of readers.  This wasn’t meant to appeal to a broad range of readers, it was meant to draw in everyone in that select group.  I suppose that’s a way to go, obviously the publisher thought so.

Not that any of that matters.  If you can target a book and get a publisher, great; if you just have an idea, great.  But none of that is the point. 

What’s important is very simple: If you want to write, write.

What a long, strange year it’s been

OK, it’s the beginning of June so it’s only been a little over five months so far, but it seems like the Spring just dragged on.  The weather was just too disorganized and didn’t settle into a normal or at least expected seasonal pattern.  I just couldn’t get a handle mentally on where I was in the year.  It doesn’t even really feel like June yet.

The rain and humidity were also a drag.  Last year just seemed to go so much more easily and I had more energy.  We even did some gardening.  In fact, I think that’s why I felt better.

Now, we didn’t get that much done.  The guy who does our lawn dug up a front bed that once had some shrubs in it.  They got too big for the space, got very woody and began to die off.  That was bad for the shrubbery but left a good spot for planting.  We put in some ornamental grasses and flowers and the like and it turned out pretty good.  We also did some container gardening for veggies and herbs.

I like to say that in two months we got a good weekend’s worth of work done.

Pathetic, but true.  It was, however, very therapeutic.  Getting out in the sun and fresh air and doing something constructive was really good for both of us.  We decided the money was better spent now and wouldn’t really help in retirement, so we went for it.  Somehow I was OK with that.  We also pushed ourselves physically – work 15 minutes, sit down for an hour, that sort of thing.  Still, I don’t think I’ve been that relaxed in years.  It was great.  I learned some things, too. 

Things got too hot for the leafy greens but we got a lot of excellent cherry tomatoes, those plants just wouldn’t quit.  We also had some cucumbers, green peppers, string beans and a couple handfuls of really good lima beans.  The rabbits got all of the blossoms so no zucchini, but plenty of basil and mint and dill and a few other herbs.

This year not so much.  The weather really hasn’t been cooperating.  Even if we had gotten some vegetables planted I doubt that they would have survived.  We’re still going to try though.  Some of the herbs actually survived the winter and are coming back, as are most of the flowers and plants out front.  Even some of the annuals and the strawberries came back and I was sure the snow and ice would have done them all in.

We also have three tomato plants growing.  They’re either from some tomatoes that dropped off last year’s plants or the squirrels planted them.  However it happened we have some tomatoes going – so I guess not everything would have died if we had planted it, but we didn’t have the strength to do it anyway.

We’ll just get some plants and put them in, probably next week, and see what happens.  It won’t be as much work but it should get us out of the house and into the sunlight and fresh air.  I think it will be almost as satisfying.  I want us to get that same feeling we had last year.

And we want some more of those cherry tomatoes.

Exertion and recognizing limits, in context

In case you haven’t notice I can’t leave well enough alone.  I decided after yesterday’s events that I needed to stop letting my ego get in the way of my common sense.  Of course I immediately began questioning that conclusion.

Is it really common sense to stop, or do I need to push myself more?  Then it occurred to me that I’ve been through this before.

I have a motto: I have to try.

If I don’t try I won’t know if I can do it or not.  I need to test my limits and I used to do that to the extreme, doing something and then collapsing and realizing that I had gone too far.  I would exceed my limits; the point where I should have stopped was always way before I finally did.  Eventually, through trial and error – mostly error – I learned enough to know when I was about to or had just gone too far.  Even knowing when I had just passed the limit was enough to keep me from hurting myself.  So I managed to do things and stretch myself and not do too much damage.

So why am I still hurting myself by doing things I shouldn’t be doing?  If I learned so much why am I still making mistakes and why am I questioning reasonable conclusions?

Well, I’m questioning reasonable conclusions because I’m human and I’m foolish and that’s just what I do.  That takes a lot more effort to stop, but I’m working on it and I’ll get better.

I do know why I was stupid yesterday.  It was something done in public.  I look fairly normal in public, I work really hard at it, and I want to keep it that way so the impulse towards stupid is great.  Someone asked me how long it had taken me to recover because I look – more or less – like I have.  Since I haven’t recovered my act must be good, but that’s my problem.

When I pushed myself before it was done in private or at least anonymously.  Also, when people don’t know me I’m smart enough to ask for help with the hard stuff.  Yesterday people knew who I was so this was the public persona that hides the disability.  That me hasn’t learned how to avoid dangerously breaking through the limits.  That part of me is a monumental idiot.

So you see, questioning conclusions – that I had listened to my ego and not my common sense – led me to ask the question ‘Why would I do that?’.  And the answer was that I haven’t learned to apply the lessons of my private life to my public life.  Now I know what to do.  I need to pay attention to how hard I’m pushing myself in all contexts – anonymous or not the same rules have to apply.  The next time that sort of thing comes up I can and should try, but if I can’t I need to just admit it.

As in most things, this is easier said than done, but in time and with practice I think that I can do it.

Ego

I try to act normal – well, as normal as possible and in a physical way.  When I’m out in public I try to hide any problems that I have.

I did that in a really stupid way today.

Someone asked me for help moving a couple of boxes and of course I said I would help.  As soon as I started I knew that it was a mistake.  The boxes were too heavy.  I could move them but they were well beyond my practical limit.  I will sometimes do something and joke that my doctors would be mad at me.  This was beyond even that level of exertion.

But did I stop?  No.  I was too embarrassed to say that I couldn’t do it.

Did I hurt myself?  I sure did.

So now I’m in pain and I’m also mad at myself for being so stupid.  I didn’t want anyone to know that I couldn’t do something so I did something I shouldn’t have done.

Hopefully I didn’t hurt myself too badly and I’ll just be in pain for a week or so.  I also hope that I learned something from this.  Oddly enough this situation hasn’t come up before.  Being a hermit means I don’t encounter things like this very often, or at all.  Today was an exception and I failed the test.

Ego has no place in managing my disability and I have to make sure I don’t let it control my actions in the future.

Use me as an example of something you shouldn’t do.  Pay attention to your body and your common sense.  I’m sure I have some of that around here somewhere, I just didn’t have it with me today.