Just gave Peanut Butter a little haircut around her eyes and nose, and the girls helped me to apply her monthly flea and tick protection. Poor Peanut Butter found out from the vet last week that she has lyme disease... not nearly as serious for dogs as it is for humans, but we have to hide an antibiotic in her breakfast and dinner every day for a month.
Now I'm on the porch, enjoying a cool breeze, thinking about a second cup of coffee and heading up to the beach.
I'm still feeling a bit down, though at the beach it is easier to forget. I drank too much last night, though, and paid for it with strange dreams and a bit of a hangover.
I'll probably finish up Peter Straub's "A Dark Matter"
today... I haven't found it very gripping or compelling.Maybe 2pm
I finished my Peter Straub novel
and remain unimpressed. I do feel like a trip to Barnes & Noble to stock up, but will probably change my mind once I am comfotably ensconced on our porch with my 4 o'clock (or 6 o'clock) beer.So instead of criticizing Peter Straub's most recent effort, I turn to my own writing and wrestle with what type of writing I should focus on, and how best to focus my efforts and be more consistent.
Back in early July, with three months to go until my 44th birthday and fifteen months until I turn 45, I started to set some goals for myself that included fitness, organization, and writing, but the overwhelming feeling has taken over on many days and nights and prevented me from doing much more than staying on top of the bills, pushing paper around, and watching several episodes of Glee in bed with London and Maddie every night when Rex has been away in Washington DC working on an important transaction.
So I'll start with a way of writing that is most familiar and comfortable to me. I pick a quote or two from something I'm reading -- in this case, Solitude: A Return to the Self
by Anthony Storr -- and launch in with my own stream-of-consciousness thoughts."Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a single artist." -- Edward Gibbon
No argument there. Particularly in the days I spent avoiding group projects in college and business school, I've always been a solitary creature who'd rather write a 100-page paper on my own than try to pull together 20 pages each from five members of an alleged team. At the same time, high school and college presented the opportunity to discuss "deep thoughts" -- philosophy, politics, psychology, sociology/culture -- that so rarely occur in my life today. When Rex and I get together with other couples, we tend to talk about kids and school and their activities... I'd feel a little out of place to bring up the question of whether we exist.
"Many of the world's greatest thinkers have not reared families or formed close personal ties." -- Anthony Storr
What I do know is that I'd never trade my life with Rex and London and Maddie and our friends for my lonely single life of solitude and creativity. I occasionally think there will be plenty of time for that life when the girls have gone away to college.
Instead, right now I focus on the joy of a perfect day at the beach, the feeling of a brand new bicycle, the bond between a girl and her dog.
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