Letters

I forgot to send my grandmother her birthday card. I’ve become too busy to drop a card to my grandmother two days before her birthday. Most family members I send an e-card to them right around the day of their birthday is cheaper and more earth-friendly that way. However, it is also further proof to me that the art of letter writing is dying.

I have actually been thinking about this a lot lately. With my purchase of an iPhone, my parents learning how to text message, and emailing sometimes being a faster way to get a hold of some one than calling them we are more connected than ever these days. But the passion seems to have fallen out of those communications. It’s everyday and mundane, but we love it. Call me nostalgic, but I like going out to my mail box to find more than bills and junk.

When I was in high school I had a few pen pals. People I’d met at different functions and wrote back and forth with about monthly. This was in the late ‘90s when internet was starting to become a normal thing in the American household and I could have just as easily written emails back and forth but it wouldn’t have been the same. There’s something that goes in to sitting down and writing a letter to some one: picking out the stationary, what pen you’ll use, what you are and aren’t going to mention. There is so much more effort in that then writing 140 characters or less about your morning coffee. And really, if you think about it, not many people care about the mundane day to day things that we do in our life. In fact, there’s a line that we cross all too frequently in our over connectedness.

I’m not saying that I want to go back to a day when letter writing was the main form of communication, I would just like to revive the hand-written word. It shouldn’t be a dying art, but sadly it is.

Is there such a thing as TOO crafty?

I had some one tell me that I was too crafty for my own good. At first, I wasn’t sure what she meant, and then I thought about it. I realized what she meant was that I’m dividing my focus among too many things trying to be amazing at all of them with only being good at most of them. I love to make jewelry, I love to write, I love to travel, I love planning events. I like to sew, I like to garden, and at times I enjoy working for an online high school, but where do my passions fall? I know I’m not one dimensional, no one is, but for me to be ultimately successful with any one of my endeavors involving something I love to do, then it’s quite likely I’ll need to buckle down and focus on the thing that I want the most.

So my good friend, and coworker, MINIGirl asked me: Why do you have to choose? My initial thought was: Yeah, why do I have to choose? But the reality is: do I want to be a Jack of all trades, but a master of none?

So, how do I decide? Why does it feel like so much of what I decide is going to define me as a person? A big part of me wants to just cut loose from the traditional work world and endeavor to pursue all of the things I love and some how make a living by doing it. What would my life look like if I did do that? Do I really have that kind of drive an initiative to achieve what I feel like I deserve? How long am I willing to be the starving artist before I can achieve something that may never come?

Creative Drive

This morning I found myself trying to suppress the urge to just call in to work and just go home to be creative. On my walk from the MAX station to my office I can pass by two different stores that sell art of local artists, and at least one artsy clothing store depending on the path I choose to walk the eight or so blocks. Having a full time job I find that I often don’t have time to do the things I really want to do: write a novel, make jewelry, sew something or dig in the dirt of my garden. With that full time job comes paid time off, luckily, but there are only so many days that I can take off to balance with the work week.

Many other creative types understand the need for creative time, the desire to have a space dedicated to the goal of making something. For me, if I go too long with out indulging my urge to create to satisfaction I end up where I am now: longing to run away somewhere so I can do just that.

Tigger

It can be frightening, really, if one stops to think about it for a moment about how brief a pet’s life is when compared to the span of a human’s life time. When I adopted Tigger from Hubby’s mom back before he was hubby the thought never entered my mind that she wasn’t always going to be there with me. As years wore on and my life’s circumstances changed she was always right there, a static and predictable aspect of my home life. It seemed though, that there was always room for more love in my life. Anyone who knows me will agree that I’m an un abashed animal lover and if I could I would open my home to many more than I currently have. Which is why when Hubby and I moved in to a house we adopted a dog, and then six months later another cat.

I feel a bit guilty, in retrospect, for being selfish and bringing more animals into our home, but at the time I couldn’t have known how Tigger would react. With the two other animals in the picture and vying for Hubby and my affections Tigger became more reclusive choosing to spend her time alone in the sleeping in the bay window or on the back of the couch in the other room rather than in my lap or on the cushion next to me. We joked that she was just becoming a crabby old lady cat, but I made sure that her spot next to me was available at night, and most times she took it.

A month ago Tigger started throwing up every two hours or so and acting very lethargic. It wasn’t like her at all, and it worried me. Hubby and I drove out to the emergency vet hoping it was something easily cared for. After two hours and inconclusive x-rays we drove home with her still sick and instructions of hopefully care for her to make her better.

The next day Hubby came home for lunch to check on her to discover that she was still throwing up regularly. He took her back to the emergency vet to have blood tests done. Her blood pressure was so low they had difficulty drawing her blood, but what little they did get confirmed that she had developed feline diabetes and her body was essentially shutting down. I was at work, crying my eyes out trying to decide what to do. She was my baby, she had always been there for me even if she didn’t know why, and here I had put her life in question because I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe that’s just my guilty conscience talking.

In the end my amazing boss drove me to the emergency vet so I could be there with Tigger and Hubby and make the decisions necessary. Ultimately, it came down to five days in the veterinary ICU and a lifetime of two insulin shots a day for her or end her suffering. If money hadn’t been a factor I would have done anything possible to make her healthy again. But, as it is with everything in life there are no guarantees. And as I held her, and looked down at her I asked her what she wanted. Unquestioningly, I know she wanted us to let her go. So, we did.

Ultimately, she lived a good eleven years and was a very happy spoiled cat for most of them. I know we made the right choice to let her go because it was what she wanted. I still miss her terribly, but I know she’s in a better place now.

The Guilty Conscience Strikes Again

I’ve written about this before – but I think it is a common topic among writers – finding inspiration. I have been so busy traveling for work lately that I have all but forgotten about my blogging duties. That could be just an excuse, but I’ll never tell if it is or not. Technically, I’m already doing better about my blogging consistency than I was last year and that is probably a good thing. I think I have subconsciously committed myself to posting to my blog at least once a week whether it’s a second hand article or I’m just “phoning it in”, and when I don’t I feel guilty. So I suppose that’s where blogs like this come in.

On my commute to work this morning I spent some time on the MAX thinking about what I should blog about next. I don’t want my posts to be too garden-centric, so I ruled that out. I don’t want to post about work or traveling for work, although that may come up at a later date, I’m tired of thinking about it right now. But again I come back to feeling like I’m writing for an audience and not for myself. In reality I should just be writing about whatever I want to write about and not what I think people might want to read. So, I guess ultimately this blog post is just going to be two things: me feeling guilty for not posting, and me not knowing what to write. Maybe I should just take the advice of my college professors and all of those years of participating in NaNoWirMo and just sit down with the intention to write and something will be produced. Lovely, I’m sure that will be incredibly entertaining.

I don’t know if anyone that I don’t know is reading this or not, but if you are reading this and would like me to write about something feel free to leave a comment. Cheers!