These days, my ugly list never seems to shrink. For those unfamiliar with this term, I always have an ugly list. I update it monthly. It includes all those things that no one wants to do, but need doing. Since as a writer, one must show, not tell, here’s my show and tell:
I’m currently trying to teach two unwilling teens to drive so they can move beyond the learners’ permit. We also are filling out two passport applications that will take twelve weeks to process. My printer may have a nervous breakdown because every time I mess up, I have to start over. Fifty-seven years of life, two degrees, and countless opportunties to fill out applications of every which way and kind, still are insufficient to help me wade through govermenteese. All of this, piles on top of bills, FASFA’s, back to school stuff for high school and middle, and my own work for teaching 9th grade and drama. I did get a flu shot, but need to get them for five others in our family. I also need to schedule a follow up appointment for myself with my general practitioner, and for our new puppy with our vet. Swamped doesn’t begin to cover it.
There’s a running gag, “If you want something done, ask a busy person.” This is a trope propegated by someone who wants to pawn off an ugly task from the ugly list to someone else they see slogging through their things that have to be done but don’t have an inherrient internal reward attached. The ugly list I have includes almost exclusively tedious tasks that are the emotional equivalent of soggy towels in the laundry, dinner dishes in the morning, and forms that need to be faxed somewhere. They are also things that in most cases, need to be managed and overseen or they won’t happen.
As a result, something needed to give.
My writing took it on the chin. I can’t say I had no time because I binge watched Strange New World and Lower Deck. My brain wanted an escape and found it in Star Trek until this earworm got into my brain.
I’d love to say I identify with Nurse Chapel in this number.
But I’m not ready ready, and it’s time for me to “work so hard for this,” so success can be overnight, but not really.
I need to edit my book and occasionally submit an article somewhere in hopes someone takes it because I wrote something they found interesting. I’d look at writing and you could hear my brain flatlining.
BEEEEEEEEEEEP. And I’d run from the blank page. I needed to stop avoiding what I need to be doing.
So this blog is my attempt to force myself back into the writing fray of five hundred words a day, no excuses, no matter what. I will see if I can go 30 days, writing every day. Wish me luck. Day 1. Nuts, still have fifty plus words to go. I know that all good habits –steps, prayer, writing, reading, cooking, parenting, everything, begins with being willing to do the work, to do the hard parts first. I know, if I make myself do it, it will start getting done.
I looked at the ugly list. It is twenty items long. I worked with my daughter on her common app. I called my son about the Fasfa. The list still felt twenty items long. I came to one inescapable conclusion.
I need ice cream….after I edit three pages of my book.
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