Fear of a Black Hat

I lost my favourite hat today.

I had it yesterday. I remember taking it off during the drive home because my head was feeling weird.

I had to go shopping for paint this morning and I wanted to put on my hat and go to the store. Now I’m old, and misplacing objects has pretty well become common place these days. Can’t find something one day, it’ll turn up the next day. I put important things like my keys in the exact same spot as soon as I get home so I don’t lose them, but hats, coats, gloves…whatever. No big deal. I’ve got plenty of other hats.

But today I went apeshit looking for my hat before I left. I checked the car. I checked the closet, the stairs, my room, my bed (it would NEVER be there – I saw Drugstore Cowboy!), every single inch of my house and I couldn’t find my hat. Today, the hat became the biggest deal of all.

So why today? Why did I go nuts looking for a hat that will probably turn up as soon as I’m finished writing this?

Because I need luck. And the hat, my favourite hat, is a crutch. My security hat, as it were. I had it all figured out. My day, like most of my days, is planned to the moment. If I put on my hat, went and did my errands, the whole day would go swimmingly and everything would be perfect.

Only I don’t have the hat. So, as anyone who is superstitious or overly anxious will tell you, the day will now go to shit.

But whose fault would it be if the day went to shit? Would it be the hat’s fault? An inanimate object that was crafted in a factory in China somewhere among hundreds of other similar black hats has that much power over my life. And I have no such power to guide the day out of the shit. Apparently.

How ridiculous does that sound?

The day is going to be exactly what it is and no more, no less.

How shitty has this day been? I left without the hat, got everything I need to finish painting my kitchen, came back, took everyone out for lunch, finished my paint prep, made dinner, posted on Instagram, and drank my requisite 64 oz of water.  The opera on Saturday Afternoon at the Opera was La Boheme, one of my favourites and exactly what I needed to hear today at this moment in my life and everyone in the house left me alone because they know when it’s La Boheme they don’t interrupt. Not one freaking sound.

That doesn’t sound like such a bad day, does it? And whatever is going to happen during the rest of the day and night is going to happen and will turn out exactly as it’s meant to turn out. Whether I find the hat or not.

The universe is sending me a message, and maybe I need to listen to these more often.

I hate wearing hats anyway. 

Writing Enough

I’m not writing enough.

I hear myself say that every day. I’m sitting here in the chaos that is my workspace—I like it that way—surrounded by six printed copies of my draft novel with Beta comments (I am in the process of sorting through them so I can rewrite the next draft and improve upon the foundations I laid in the first , or at least, that's the intention), craft books, unread novels, half-read novels, pens, paper, lip balm, hand cream, water cups, candles, flags, a lamp, and a sewing machine. The sewing machine serves no purpose except to remind me of two things: (i) no one single person has to be able to do everything on the planet; and (ii) it's okay to not be able to do something for myself. You may think that's easy to remember. For someone like me, it's not. But that's for another day, you see, because I'm not writing while I talk about the sewing machine sitting on my desk, collecting dusk, with a black tin car made out of a kazoo sitting on the spindle area. 

I should be working on editing that novel, or putting down the new story that is floating through my brain made up by a sibling of the creature who created the draft(s) sitting next to me. In fact, I wish I could stay home and work on that all day.

But it's tough to be a paid writer these days. Everyone can write a book, and every other person has self-published at least one. Even journalists have a tough time out there. If you aren't a big name, you're a freelancer, and you're expected to sell your rights along with your story. And unless you do give up those rights, you're not covered if something you write happens to insult someone else. I spend my days writing emails about situations just like that. Very long emails. Sometimes they're at least three or four paragraphs. Other times I'm writing to websites scraping content that is put forth by these underpaid writers. These are much longer letters, letting these sites know that they can't get away with infringement. Those are sometimes two or three page letters. I work on contracts, communications, special projects, all of which involve some type of written communication -- memos, emails, letters -- all written by me. I would say I write an average of 10,000 words per day at work. 

Throughout the day, in the early morning, and often in the evening, before I sit down at my workspace, I check in with my organizations (writing organizations, schools, and the like) and write emails. Couple of sentences here, a few more there. Not much, nothing more than a paragraph.

Then there are the messages - instant messaging, text messaging. I don't write one or two word answers. I remember the days when we had to pay per text, so I like to get my money's worth out of that ten cents per text. But now, messaging is practically unlimited. And I'm a writer. I talked about this with other writers the other day, and we know we have a problem with instant messaging. Where many of our friends are good with one word, nay, one letter (don't get me started about that), we're off writing a blog per message. So those are a few words I get in. I would say at least 50 per message, sometimes 100, sometimes, uh, more...oops. 

After all of that, I find myself here, at my workspace, realizing that I haven't written at all today. My goal is to write at least a paragraph a day, whether that be in my edits or on a new piece. Sometimes I do more than a paragraph, and sometimes less. Yesterday I was so consternated at things going on in life I wrote a poem in a fitted peak. But that's not a paragraph. 

But today I haven't written a paragraph at all. Instead, I wrote this blog entry. 

People always ask me, "How's your writing going?" I always say I'm not writing enough. Because, as you can see, I'm not.

When I start writing enough, that's when I'll stop and take a Netflix break.