What would I do...clip?

Saw a friend of mine I haven’t seen in ages. She’s been retired for two years.

What do you do all day, I asked her.

My house has never been so clean, she said, my drawers never so tidy. Every afternoon I sit down to eat my lunch and cook dinner every night. The dishwasher is never full. My laundry is folded and put away, my windows gleam, there is no soap scum on my shower walls. My cabinets and closets are organized; my attic and basement are empty. I clip coupons and food shop; we are never out of anything. I walk every afternoon and take naps. The car is polished, the inside vacuumed. The dog is brushed; his bowl is washed and dried each day. Saturdays and Sundays hold no special value and are viewed as just another two days to endure.

But what do you do? I asked.

Nothing, she said, I do nothing.

What if I retired?

What if I didn’t write?

Would I go back to the music I thought would bring me fame, or back to painting which I knew would not? How would I spend the rest of my life...cleaning, clipping and folding my underwear just so?

What would I do?

What would you do if you didn’t write?

Perk baby perk

A quick post because I’m off to work soon but I wanted to share a revelation. Revelation, that sounds serious.

For a year my column appeared in one weekly newspaper which, though it covers about six towns, has a readership somewhere around 40,000 and is considered local. A picture accompanied the column so it was not unusual for strangers to stop me in the grocery store, post office and even at work and comment about how much they loved my latest piece. Bless them and their positive comments. It always made my day.

Now that I have taken my column to eight newspapers in an area one town over, (100,000 households and 4M page views a month), and all the way to the state line, without a head-shot BTW, the folks who read it haven’t a clue what I look like and only know me by my words.

Only know me by my words...well, that’s not quite true.

Because I lived, many years ago, in the area where the column appears now, I have old friends, associates, employees, neighbors and family members connecting in a way I never would have imagined. I have gone from people who know me from my writing, which is really a kick, to people who knew me because of who I was and now know me as a writer. It’s cool.

This morning I received an email from someone who worked for me forty years ago. My God, my past is percolating with updates. I love it. Thank God I was a decent human being or I’d feel hunted.

Any recent updates from your past lately?

Draw, cut, grind, wrap, fit, solder and shine...pray

I haven’t posted in a while, been working on a lot of stuff. One project...a short story that I am entering in a contest. It’s romance. That’s right, a romantic short story, something I have never done before. I wanted to write something I knew about and write something that would exercise my writer's mine,  stained glass and short fiction.

Not one of my designs but very similar to some of my projects

In a former life, decades ago, I was a stained glass designer and builder of all things bright, shiny and complicated. I loved telling people I designed stained glass, it was unusual and to me kind of cool. What I liked about it was that the process is more than drawing pretty pictures. The artist must take into account the properties and difficulties regarding the medium. It was always a challenge, always a surprise. Sort of like writing.

So wish me luck. I have stepped way outside my writing form and am stretching myself.  That’s a good thing I think.

When is the last time you stretched your writing muscles?