A reminder from the book The Good Creative by Paul Jarvis
“Chapter 2: Share Your Ugly Process”
I have been slowly reading my way through a collection of Ray Bradbury short stories. In the beginning of the book he writes about how occurrences in his life lead him to turn it into a story. And maybe this is a method I need to explore and experiment more with in the future. My current circumstances have to be material for something.
However, there is always something.
Right now I have to paint an apartment unit to hopefully get rented soon. An unrented apartment at the moment limits the finances of what I can get done with upkeep of the place. So right now there is “holding pattern” going on.
I also hate painting. It is a lonely, slow and monotonously boring work to do. And after 8 hours of painting, I have to do a second coat on the whole unit. Plus I have to do all the painting of the trim work still which probably is another 4-6 hour process alone. So I am a bit pissed off.
And when I am doing this work hearing the phrase from people, “Are you having fun yet?”
How do I explain it to people? When I am working on boring shit alone my mind seems to go into “hyper drive”. There are lot of ideas and insights flowing. I cannot write them down. I wish I could hire a person to sit in the room just to be a stenographer for my thoughts. Afterwards, when I am done painting and I see that blank sheet on the notepad. And all I can do is draw a blank. I get even madder.
Plus, the project of decluttering my own apartment has been put on the back burner. I really wish I had someone to trade “Offense and Defense” with to conquer this. But here there is no division of labor to be had here.
Trying to explain this is a waste of time and energy.
“What did I say to you?” is the phrase that if I had a dime every time I said this lately would actually allow me to afford the fore mentioned stenographer.
Plus, how I get people to understand that getting this out the way will help with the writing and reading time?
Especially, when they do not even notice the results of that time when they happen.
This is how it has been going (in a nutshell)
Other person: “I don’t understand what you are doing?”
Me: “Why don’t you ask questions?”
Other person: “Because I don’t want to know.”
Me: “Have you seen my hammer?”
And I will not go on the issue of “returning phone calls” or “How many times have I given you my cell number?”
I am not going into the Robin Williams story. However, before the news came about him that day. I was listening to Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast in which he was interviewing the comedian Bob Newhart. They were having a discussion of his albums that cane out between about 1958 and 1963. And at the end, he attached Bob’s bit about “What if Abraham Lincoln had an agent?” It still worked. So I went and downloaded one of his albums. I wanted to start with the first one. However, I had to actually order the CD version of his first album The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart. So I had to start listening to him with the second album The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back because it was available for download at that moment.
This was the clip that later day would become a strange coincidence.
I don’t think there are people who want to be “talked down” for the ledge.
The Media Outlets demonstrate daily that “Talk is cheap”.
Rather, they want to be “Listen To” in order to get away from that ledge.
Engaging can be a more valuable service.
But for now I have laundry to do.
And to close with another reminder.
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