Rambling...


I guess I needed...lemme check...three weeks off. Sorry. It all kicked in with Annual Conference - and it hasn't slowed down at all...

Last night I moved heaved and earth to get a computer connection to our main TV so that Lori could watch a Netflix "watch instantly" or whatever they call it. I have a couple "used" computers at the house - still good, figured I'd be able to use one to buffer the video so that we could watch the movie - it's an XP machine, should have been able to handle it but...no direct internet connection. I grabbed a wireless USB internet...thing...from the church. Of course to install it - wait for it - I had to be on the internet and download the drivers... sigh... Tried another machine, loaded with Ubuntu. I couldn't connect it either... ('cause I'm a geek...but sometimes a hopelessly clueless geek...)

So I did what I should have done in the first place and connected the laptop to the TV. Now, I didn't want to do that because, frankly, I didn't want to watch the movie that Lori had picked out and I intended to surf the 'net while she watched her, yeah, I'm going to go there - chick flick. Bleah.

But, all evidence to the contrary, I'm a pretty good husband, so I made the sacrifice and got it all going on the laptop (I didn't even pout as I sat on the couch and watched it, honest).

The movie was Julie & Julia about Julia Child when she first learned to cook and when she collaborated on her first cookbook and a woman named Julie who feels like her life is going nowhere and decides to start a blog (to gain purpose?) and blog about cooking all 520something recipes in Julia's first book - in a year.

And it wasn't bad. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, anyway.

I found myself way more interested in Julia Child's history than in following the insecurities and narcissism of the contemporary Julie. Still - the evolution of the blog and the followers and the comments - and hearing people's opinions of what she was doing change as she became "successful" was interesting.

And maybe that has pushed me to get back to it. I don't know. But here I am again. I will say that over the past month when I've sat down to the keyboard to write anything it's been like trying to drive through thick fog - or snow. The thoughts are out there...but I can't quite grasp them, I can't quite see them. That worries me a bit, I have to admit.

The other thing is that I just haven't felt like I've had anything to say. Bono (of U2) says that writers shouldn't suffer from writer's block. From the book Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas he says:
Even as a child I remember sitting, listening to my teacher in school talking about the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats. he had a writer's block - there was a period when he couldn't write. I put my hand up and said: "Why didn't he write about that?" - "Don't be stupid. Put your had down, don't be so cheeky." But I didn't mean it as a smart-arse. I have lived off that idea: Know the truth, the truth will set you free. If I've nothing to say, that's the first line of the song. In fact, even on our second album [October], I was about having nothing to say: I try to sing this song...I try to stand up but I can't find my feet/I try to speak up but only with you am I complete. This has always been the trick for me. And maybe its just that: a trick. But it tricks me out of myself. I am able to write, always, because as a writer, I am always unable to not be true.
And, yeah, that's true for Bono, I don't doubt that a bit... and it makes a certain amount of sense.
So...I just need to write through it, right?

Yeah...

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