Draft Dodgers

Draft Dodger: I am my own worst enemy.

Draft Dodging is my new term for my seeming inability to finish and publish any piece of writing, from these blog posts to my novels and other writing that I am working on. I take frequent strolls through my morgue files, in search of any lifesigns that I may have missed on the first ten or twenty times I re-examined these particular specimens. 

Some drafts just need a really good last line and some polishing. Every once in a while I get a burst of inspiration and I finish those. Most of the time I have no idea where I was going with that one. Problem is that these bursts seldom occur anywhere near my laptop, especially since my laptop isn't as portable now as it was when it had a battery. I have forgotten why Jed took the battery out, since I bought a new laptop, but then the new one was totalled as an unfortunate bystander during one of my falls. I have no idea how, but it went flying off my desk as I went flying in the opposite direction. Just as well, I hated that thing. Did one of my surviving brain cells plot revenge without my knowledge or consent? I wouldn't put it past me.

Where was I going 50 or 75 words ago? Oh yes, my draft graveyards. I was going to add to my excuse list my lack of any ability to save ideas the old fashioned way, by chiseling my ideas into a flat rock. No, I am just kidding, I am not that old. Back in my school years, we had already progressed to making marks on paper with a number 2 pencil. 

This post should probably go back to the morgue. I'm calling it: time of death, 6:45 pm. I brought it up from the morgue at around 11:00 this morning, so it is only getting posted because I decided to be more honest about how crappy my writing usually is.

Is there such a thing as a second world country?

You know, I have written and read a lot about First World Problems, and the gaping chasm that is the third world, but I don't know that I have read anything about the Second World. Is there such a thing? I could google it... everything is on the internet now, and there is no excuse for lazy journalism -- but I'm not a journalist, and this is not a research project for a class, it's just a blog and it's supposed to be stream of consciousness writing. Why is that? Why am I defending myself to myself? Whose voice is up there, arguing with me? And why have I gone so far down a rabbit trail that I can't even remember what I was going to say about the Second World?

Looking for a voice of reason, I don't think I will find one anywhere in my brain tonight. I should just go to bed now.

I remember now, why I was thinking about the gap between the First and Third worlds, so I won't go to bed just right away. I con't speak for everyone because I am just thinking random thoughts, but I am thinking that most people think that they are the Second World, like the geopolitical equivalent of the quintessential middle child. "Marsha, Marsha, Marsha! If you are young enough to not get that tidbit of pop culture, then you are young enough to just google it. I am going to bed now.

He is Risen Indeed!

He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

With these words, the Christian Church was begun.

It was very early, around sunrise on the first day of the week. For Jewish folk, it would have been their back to work day, like a Monday morning for us gentiles. On this particular morning, a motley little group of men were gathered in a borrowed room, with the door locked because they were scared of the authorities. 

I think I understand a tiny bit of what the disciples of Jesus must have been feeling that morning. I have had the horrifying pleasure of being in the room when a loved one dies three times: my mother in 2007, my dad in 2015, and then my husband in 2019. Sitting afterwards in the gloom of the "Quiet Room" in the hospital -- an exhausted, dejected gathering of family and friends. 

Back in the locked room: what could they say to cheer each other? They had been The Twelve!  They were only the eleven now, one of their members had betrayed Christ and then took his own life. Another had just denied even knowing the Master three times, he cried bitter tears. All of them had deserted Jesus in His hour of need. What were they to do now? They had thought that when the Messiah came, He would free His people from the oppression of Rome and set up a kingdom in Jerusalem. They had even fought about who would sit at His right and left sides. Were they wrong about their Master? Had they been duped by a false Messiah?

Meanwhile, a group of women carried a heavy load of spices to anoint the body of Christ. It was a hot country, before the days of embalming, so the custom of the day was to apply a pungent blend of spices and perfumes to cover the smell.

What happened next changed the course of human history. He was Risen! Jesus Christ came back from the dead, just like He had said He would, but they hadn't understood. 

And that's how Christianity began. Women were the first witnesses, unheard of at that time. Those cowardly men who ran away and hid for fear of arrest were transformed into Apostles who turned the world upside down. The one who had denied even knowing Jesus brought about 3000 people into the fold with his first sermon. Of the Eleven, ten were martyred for their faith, and the remaining one was exiled to a lonely island where he wrote the book about his amazing revelation. 

Two thousand years later, a deadly pandemic might close the doors of the church buildings, but it doesn't stop the church from meeting. God said that where ever two or more gather in His name He will be there. Even in cyber space. 

They may have been right after all....

Anybody remember writing Differential Aptitude Tests (DAT) in high school? 

I remember writing a DAT test when I was in the ninth grade. Basically, it's a tool for career planning. I had already decided that I wanted to be a teacher. Or a librarian. And a rock star. In grade nine I reasoned that I could teach during the school year, and spend the summer holidays touring with my band.

The results from my DAT test (I know that the T stands for test, so it is a bit redundant to call it a differential aptitude test test but that's what they called it. I don't make the rules.), anyways, they suggested that I could be a doctor or something in the medical field. I said, "ha" to that suggestion because "lol" hadn't been invented yet.

I didn't think I could possibly be a doctor or anything else in the medical field.  So I got my B ed, but I only taught for seven years, and then I had to quit that because of my health.

I got to thinking a while back, and made the connection, of my health problems and the career counselling way back in the ninth grade: I did have a career in the medical field! I am a full time, professional patient. It doesn't pay much, but the hours are pretty good. I can work from home or anywhere in the world, really.  So the DAT testing works after all. Huh.

 
  

Sometimes Late at Night ...

... I sleep-write!  (and then I somehow get it posted online! Oops!)

Thank you, Lord for enabling me to laugh at my own foibles. I will never run out of things to laugh about.

I am referring to my habit of staying up until way, way past mere nodding off at the computer. Case in point, the blog I apparently posted last night.  I found it this morning, as did some of you. Nobody commented on it, oddly enough. I don't even remember what the title was supposed to be. Only the vague blurry memory of not being able to type the word 'wasn't'. Easy word to type now, sure, on the Friday side of midnight.

Normally, I would delete such babel, so fewer of you would have knowledge that I sleep-write sometimes. I decided to leave it up because that is the real me. Some of you have had messages and comments from me that look like this: ???????????????The fewer the people who see the evidence of my social medium mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm somnambulism    kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkthe bettter...............................................................Yeah, like that.

I recently read on some medical site that employs writers who actually have the creds to know what they are writing about, (unlike yours truly, who can only relate my experiences) that people with Parkinson's are at a greater risk of dementia than normal people. That explains a lot.

Stream of Consciousness Writing Confession: I  just now remember what I was going to write about last night! I will make tomorrow's blog about that topic.

Now to get to bed before I fall asleep tonight. I have actually had two or three experiences of falling off my chair at around four am. One such occasion resulted in the demise of my new laptop. I had it for less than a week, but I didn't think it would be covered by insurace. There just isn't a category for damages due to somnambulism.  I would categorize it as a form of temporary insanity. "Honest, officer, I have no recollection of the events leading up to the damage -- I was asleep at the time  ..."

Well, dear readers, it is now the Saturday side of midnight. You can read this tomorrow, when yesterday's tomorrow is today.

This wwasn

About Parkinson's - I Promise this time

As I was saying, Parkinson's is a fascinating disease. Most people think of PD as the shaking tremor that they associate with old people. In younger patients the symptoms are more varied, and we cycle precariously from one clinical state to another, with the occasional and precious hour or two of "on" time, in the day.

This daily dance has extreme lunges that go from the painful muscle spasms and cramps of dystonia to the involuntary muscle movements of dyskinesia, that most people associate with Michael J. Fox. The dyskinesia dance is actually the side effect of the standard med for PD: Levodopa. Levodopa looses effectiveness over the years. It is not particularly effective for
older patients, which might explain why they don't have the extreme swings in the dance. Younger patients tend to respond more to Levodopa in the early stages, some even experience a honeymoon phase where the Levodopa works very consistently, almost miraculously for a few years. In my case, I had about five months of honeymoon. Some of you might remember my "Walking and Leaping and Praising God" speech at church. In it I said that I didn't know if God had healed me, or if He just granted me a Divine Reprieve from the pain,                       

 Parkinson's is a progressive non-terminal disease. That means that the symptoms get worse and worse and then you die. PD doesn't kill you, it just makes life increasingly more miserable until you die of choking, or pneumonia, or a fatal fall.

I hadn't meant for this post to be so morbid and depressing, But if I am going to be honest in these blogs, some of the thinks I thunk are morbid and depressing. It is what it is. Godspeed!

Parkinson's is a Fascinating Disease

I didn't choose this disease. I don't know why God chose to either choose it for me, or allow it to attack me, but for whatever reason, I've got it. And that's just what is. Like Derek saying when he was dying from a horrible cancer, "It is what it is." As far as I know, he never complained or questioned God. At the start, he was sure that God wouldn't let him die first, because he was committed to taking care of me. But he was wrong.

The main difference between Derek and me was that he expected positive results from whatever he did and he was always sure that he was right. And he usually was. I always expected negative results from whatever I tried to do, and usually failed spectacularly. I was almost always unprepared for whatever I was responsible to do, and never understood why I couldn't just be more like Derek. He also could never understand why I couldn't be more like him.

I think I finally understand. It was how he was raised. It was genetic and/or his mother's positivity about whatever she took on and her expectation that he would excel at whatever he tried.

I was raised differently. It is also genetic and/or environment and my father's expectations of me. (In Derek's family his mother was the dominant parent, in mine it was my father.)

My dad was always sure that I would never succeed, Not that he lowered the bar for me, or didn't have the expectation that I ought to excel at everything, he just knew that I wouldn't. And he was usually right.

It didn't really dawn on me that Derek turned out like his mom and I turned out like my dad, and it wasn't anybody's fault. We can't even blame our parents, because they were just the result of their parents genetics and environments and so on all the way back from the very first parents.

I realize that the title of this blog does not reflect the content. I planned to write about Parkinson's, but I went off on a rabbit trail and then bunny trails naturally follow. My normal response would be to either erase the content and start over, or to change the title to reflect the content. But the definition of stream of consciousness writing is to let your brain go and write whatever you are thinking.

My thoughts change content continually, and my brains were scrambled like eggs even before Parkinson's. I will tell you about how fascinating a disease it is tomorrow. I think I will call it something like "Blame your Parents, And then Get Over It." And that's my time folks. There are lots of other Random Thinks I have Thunk, and I will try to share some of the less bizarre creations with you folks, all two of you. Godspeed.

Procrastination

The sooner you get behind, the more time you will have to catch up. Words that I have lived by. Procrastinator should have been my middle name. My middle name is Lucille. I remember my cousins saying my name was Lucille Ball, because I was always bawling. I don't remember if I cried about that, but I may have.

I remember my dad saying that he wanted to name me after a country music singer named Lucille Star. Nobody that I asked had ever heard of her. I wondered if maybe I was wrong about that memory, and my dad died before I got around to asking him. I procrastinate. 

I did get around to googling the name, and found out that it was true. There really was a country singer named Lucille Starr, and apparently she lived in St. Boniface in the 60's. We lived in St. Boniface in the 60's. Coincidence? Maybe my parents went to a concert, or maybe they knew her. She could have been our neighbour. 

Technically, this blog was not finished on the third day of daily stream of consciousness blogs, because it's 1:05 am on Tuesday morning. I procrastinate. My time is up. 

Day 2 of daily blogs

It seems like only yesterday that I started back to daily blogging. That's a day longer than most things that I start. I really would love to be diligent and self disciplined, but I am not. I am a starter upper, not a finisher.

My first grade teacher saw this trait in me and commented on my report card that I was smart enough to do the work, but that I didn't hand in my school work at the end of class because I wanted it to be perfect. I remember grade 1 quite vividly: my desk neatly organized with all of my unfinished assignments nicely stacked in the corner. Pretty much still functioning the same way. I start a project, but get stalled by the second day because I want to do it perfectly, so I will leave it until that magical day when I have time to do it justice. Then I start a new project, and the cycle continues. I remember Derek coming home from work and I would have ten unfinished projects lying around the house. 

Twenty minutes went by so fast again. This daily blog thing might actually happen. It might nor actually say anything of value or interest to anyone, but it's finished.

My Latest Thinks

My friends have been asking what I've been doing during this time of self isolation. I would love to say that I have been writing my next novel. Nope. I have a draft, a really rough draft, of a bit of memoirs, that I started at least 10 years ago. Every time I  open the file, I delete a little bit more of the manuscript. I've also got another novel in my brain that just isn't writing itself down. 

Even my blogs have become just a place where abandoned and unpublished drafts go to die.  It's been about 3 years since I last wrote anything and posted it. 

So today, I set a timer for 20 minutes and then I will publish  whatever I've got on my Random Thinks blog. No more sitting in front of a blank screen for hours trying to squeeze words out of my brain and transfer them onto a suitable platform to share. Even if I end up with a couple hundred words before I decide what I am writing about. Like a stream of consciousness session. No pressure. 

Who am I kidding: the pressure is still on. Dang. I am thinking about what I can say about my life. 

And that's my time today. Wow, 20 minutes goes by fast. I will stick with my plan, though, and give you readers (if there is anyone actually reading this, a bit more content.