A little morbid
Am I the only one who, when faced with nothing else to do, comes up with disaster scenarios, each one more morbid than the last? I found myself on the train riding home from the city tonight with nothing to read, and too brain dead to engage in my other bored past time -- composing stories in my head. So I started thinking of all the horrible things that could go wrong on my way home. That guy in the seat next to me could follow me off the train and kill me. Someone could attack me and no one would help. Someone else could get attacked, and I would be too paralyzed with uncertainty to help them. The train could crash. It could blow up. Etc., etc.
After I think of all these rather depressing things, I start to wonder what people's reactions will be. I go through the entire list of the people I know, and wonder how each of them would react to each scenario. Would I be missed? Would they visit me in the hospital? Would they want a midnight phonecall for help, or would I be better off waiting until the next day?
And then I got to thinking that this type of thinking can't possibly be normal. I don't have a death wish, I consider myself a pretty happy person, and I was on my way home from a really nice day with friends. So really have no idea why my thoughts went in that direction, but it isn't the first time, nor, I suspect, will it be the last.
And the funny part is that as soon as I have something else to distract me, I promptly forget about all those morbid thoughts and go on my merry way.
The DMV Hates me UPDATED!
UPDATE: I am finally legal! Five times was the charm in this case...
Four times now. FOUR. That is how many times I have now tried to register my car in the state of New York. However, each time I am thwarted in my attempts to do the right thing. The first few times were missing paperwork of various sorts. Things like not having a paper copy of my title because Florida did away with issuing paper titles and just keeps electronic ones on file. Imagine that, efficiency.
The third time I stood in that horribly long line for ungodly amounts of time, it was an insurance issue. I HAVE current insurance, in the state of New York no less. That was one of the first things I took care of when relocating. But no, the NY DMV will only allow you to register your car up to 45 days after the card for your insurance was issued. I am now on my second one, and THAT one is getting ready to expire as well. If I can't get this taken care of by the end of the week, I will have to have Allstate send me yet another one.
The fourth, and most recent attempt was this past Monday. I planned ahead. I knew I needed to go, so I arranged to leave an hour early after I had finished proofing pages. Just before I was set to leave, I had the paranoid thought that I should check the office hours. Good thing I did, as they closed at 4. A half-hour before.
I am beginning to think that perhaps this is Fate trying to tell me that I am destined to drive a car with expired Florida tags (they were only good through September). Heaven help any cops that may try to pull me over while I am getting this taken care of. I have the paperwork proof to show that I have been trying since June to get this done. Five months I have been at this, mostly spent waiting for someone to send me a copy of paperwork kept on file somewhere. Most of which had to go through two or more people, like my title. That little piece took almost two months to obtain, since I had to call Ford Motor, who is the lienholder while I am paying it off, and have them contact the State of Florida to request a certified copy of the title, then when they recieved it, turn around and stick it in the mail to me along with a letter saying it was ok by them that I had left the state.
So that is my adventure with the NY DMV to this point. I plan another registration attempt this Thursday, so we shall see if I actually manage to secure the prize. At this point, I have gone through the full range of emotions from annoyed to enraged to downright amused. While I want this taken care of, a little part of me is almost hoping they find another reason to turn me away. It makes a better story that way, and 5 is such a nice number.
Killing Time and Relieving Stress
I find that when I am feeling stressed out and overwhelmed, a few seconds spent on a Web site devoted to nothing more than amusing me does wonders for my overall perspective. To that end, I have started an Interesting and Amusing links section over there under the links to all your blogs. It is small right now, but if you guys send me the links to similar goofiness you find, I will add to the section.
Personally, My high score right now is 323.5 on the Penguins, Muffin Film number 4 is my favorite, and I love the dancing bunny at the end of the Jaws segment.......
Boot Babe
There is something about putting on a pair of boots, especially boots with a bit of a heel, that feels very sexy. Now, I am not much of a "shoe person." I don't swoon when walking by shoe stores, I don't rush in to do battle if someone is having a sale, heck, I don't even own all that many pairs, just the basics, with one or two fun pairs of sandals thrown in that other people bought me.
But there is something about boots. Maybe it is just me buying into the whole fashion industry hype about what is and isn't sexy, as you always see the really hot fashion models in boots with really high heels all throughout the fall and winter seasons. But I can't deny that, no matter what else is going on, when pulling on a pair of boots I have to stop and feel sexy for just a few moments before going on with my day.
A love affair
Have any of you ever wanted to write, but not wanted to at the same time. All the talk about Coffee Crew, and now chatting with Dee about fiction and writing it has really gotten me in the mood to revisit my little project on character studies. I have 5 or so written already, and have about 20 planned, with interludes by a narrator every 5 or so to tie them all together. But while I want to return to them, I am a bit scared to at the same time. I write for a living, and yet I don't think I am very good. It always amazes me when people actually enjoy something I write. But technical writing is easy, so while I always feel a twang of aprehension when I turn a story in, I get past it and move on. However, I can't say the same about my fiction.
I haven't visited my stories in several years, partially because I haven't had the time. I guess that is part of the problem, that I worry that people will find the concept or the writing silly or childish. They were well-recieved in college, which is where the original idea started. In a class actually, part of my creative writing minor requirements. I had to share them both in the class and in a community writing group we were part of, and they were liked then, so I am not sure why I hesitate now. Am I afraid everyone will see through me and realize I am just pretending to be a writer? Will they dismiss me as talentless and not worthy of the title of writer? Contradictory I know, but there you have it.
So I avoid writing them. I think about them, and other stories. I have countless stories and characters in my head, including another whole novel, plot line, characters and all, that have never seen anything resembling the light of day. Maybe I am just afraid that someone will tell me I never should let those ideas out, because I will just mangle them. If I keep them in my head, they can be as good or as bad as I want. Or maybe the act of putting them on paper would make them too real. They have become real people to me over the years, with their own quirks, and I am not sure how it would feel to share them with others. Thrilling, but frightening at the same time, like watching your child head off to the first day of school, I think. You are both proud of what they are and what they will become, and at the same time you worry about them, what people will think, how they will treat them. Will people read my stories and hate these characters I have come to love? Will they ridicule them, bully them? Or will they love them as much as I do?
So I am torn between wanting to share my work with others, and wanting to keep it locked up inside me forever, hiding behind the excuse of too much work and not enough time. I hope I can get past it, since I have a feeling the personalities I have created would want it that way.
Time and Time Again
Even though I know, intellectually, that an hour is always the same amount of time, why is it that some hours seem longer than others. The mornings at work have a tendancy to fly by -- before I know it, it is noon or later, time for lunch, and I feel like there isn't enough time for me to get anything done. However, when I return to lunch, time grinds to a halt, taking, it seems, twice as long to get to the end of the day.
Maybe the time I rush through in the mornings is tacked on to the hours in the afternoon.
I can tell myself all I want that it has to do with how busy I am in the mornings generally, plus I waste a certain amount of time chatting with friends and catching up on how the previous evening was. And as the afternoon runs down, I get tired, so I am not getting as much work done, hence I am more aware of the passage of time in general. But while that explains why it happens, it doesn't change my frustration and annoyance with the phenonemon. An hour should feel like an hour, no matter what I am doing to fill it. I shouldn't have to find things to do to force time to pass every afternoon -- it should just march along at a nice clip, just like it does in the mornings.
Old Friends
I consider some books to be old friends. I can re-read them again and again, and it is like sitting down and talking to someone who's company you truely enjoy. There are some I re-visit more often than others, and those I consider my favorites I can almost recite from memory. In fact, I no longer even need to read them cover to cover, I can just pick them up, open to any place I want, and read a page or a chapter or more, stopping whenever I feel like it, since I know what happens at the end.
Most people don't really enjoy re-reading. They figure they know how it ends, so why go through it all again. I guess for me, the appeal isn't really the story line -- that is secondary. I am interested in the characters, what they start out as, how they change and develop, what makes them who they are at the end of the story. So once I have finished a novel and know how that person evolves, I want to go back and see again how they got there, kind of like that old saying of hindsight is 20/20. It is always amazing to me how much I catch that second or thrid time through. The foreshadowing of what's to come and what will change that you miss that first time. The phrases or events that don't seem very important suddenly make a lot of sense when you know how they fit into the grand scheme of things.
I found myself craving a few old friends I hadn't visited in a long time this past weekend. Shakespeare's characters from Much Ado About Nothing, one of my favorites by him, were calling my name. Another book I went searching for on the shevles was a book I first discovered in college called The Things They Carried, which is one of the few war-time novels that really captured and held my interest. These are classics that can remain on my shelf for years at a time without provoking the urge to revisit, but every now and then I like to dust them off and remember how much I liked someone, or how great that one was to hate.
And the best feeling of all is knowing how many new friends are out there, sitting on shelves, just waiting for a chance to meet me.
Well, since I have one anyway...
Since Steve made me register in order to post comments in his blog, I now find myself the proud owner of a second blog (I have a livejournal as well, and no, I'm not giving out the link...) I guess I will use this one to attempt to actually put down on paper all the random bits of things I write in my head but never actually share with anyone. See what you have done Steve? You are subjecting the world to my random musings.
So off we go, into the as-yet unexplored realm of my inner thought process...
