Happy anniversary!

And goodbye.

Okay. Not really goodbye.

But today is the one year anniversary of this blog. (Cake!)

When I set out, I wasn’t sure I could manage a daily blog for six weeks let alone six months. When I made it to the six month mark, I wondered if I could manage a year.

When I hit the three-quarter mark, I realized that the mental overhead of coming up with something to write every day for the rest of my life and then writing it was probably not really how I wanted to be spending my time.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do hope to be writing most days, if not all, for the rest of my life. But I have decided that is more likely to happen if I turn my attention back to fiction or playwriting and away from blogging.

I’m not closing down the blog.

I’ve enjoyed doing it.

I’ve enjoyed the feedback I’ve gotten, and I’ve loved having subscribers. Even if some of you are ignoring the daily invasion of your inbox—(I know, I’ve subscribed to some blogs, too. There isn’t always time to read them all)—I have enjoyed the feeling that we are communicating. It has been a privilege to be allowed to enter there.

Thank you for your attention.

The blog will stay open. I just won’t be posting daily. You may not hear from me for days, weeks, months. But, who knows? If I have something to say, I’ll speak up.

If you’ve signed up for the RSS feed or the email subscription, you’ll know when that happens.

The rest of you are welcome to subscribe now or pop back in here from time to time to check.

It’s been fun! I’m proud to know that I managed it 365 days in a row.

So here is the final entry for Smith Sundays.

Elaine Smith—once upon a time, she wrote a blog post every day for a whole year!

Don’t tell me it’s not time for cake!

270!

I win.

Not a presidential election, unfortunately. (Or fortunately! Who would want that job?)

I’m not talking about electoral college votes but consecutive days of blog posts. 270 consecutive days! Three-quarters of a year!

Cake!

I look back, and I wonder how I did it.

I look forward, and I wonder what comes next.

Today, however, I wonder will I make my quota?

One post in front of the other. That’s how it’s done. There are no shortcuts.

If your goal is 30 minutes of exercise a day, you can’t achieve it in 25 minutes.

It’s an interesting point. And something I will remember in future goal-setting endeavors. A goal based on churning out some regular quantity isn’t subject to streamlining. I mean, you can shave minutes off a distance goal. All you can do with a time goal is add distance to it. It still takes the same amount of time.

I foresee a review of my monster To Do List to see which projects are open to efficiency improvements and which just take the time they take. I suspect the latter would be good candidates for outsourcing. You know, if I had a staff—or the money to pay them.

I wonder how such a review would turn out. I think I’ve already gotten things down to where I’m as efficient as I can be—but maybe not. Maybe there are a few more hours for mumblety-peg.*

I also wonder if that really loud sighing noise my air compressor makes is okay, but that’s probably a whole other topic. It does seem to be working very hard on this cold, cold morning, though.

That’s one thing outsourced to technology, however.

I don’t have to cut firewood.

Instead, I can sit here in moderate warmth, plotting my 271st blog entry and wondering when the heater can take a rest.

* mumblety-peg = whatever you want to do. (It comes from Cheaper by the Dozen, by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth—a wonderful book about their family life with Frank B. Gilbreth, Sr., a pioneer of motion study. )

Someone once asked Dad: “But what do you want to save time for? What are you going to do with it?”

“For work, if you love that best,” said Dad. “For education, for beauty, for art, for pleasure.” He looked over the top of his pince-nez. “For mumblety-peg, if that’s where your heart lies.”

Abundance

Even when you can’t tell.

Here’s an interesting little fact. Interesting to me, anyway. Maybe not so interesting to you. But this whole blogging process is a challenge. (That’s not the interesting part. It’s not even an unexpected part.)

One of the things that has helped me keep it going this long is the little bit of structure I’ve set up. If you follow the blog, you know we have a different general theme for each day of the week: Smith Sundays, Monday Miracles, Tuesday Tips, etc.

I can’t tell you how much easier that makes it to come up with a specific subject for each post! It totally supports the idea that you need to have a few rules and regulations in order to be creative. Inspiration needs a few boundaries, or it just escapes into the ether.

The interesting thing to me has been the discovery that certain themes are harder to keep cranking out than others. I try to keep a little ahead of blog posts. Just in case I want to take a day off. Somebody might want to fly me to Paris for lunch, you know. (Well, you may not know. I do. That’s not gonna happen, and I’d rather go to Rome, anyway.) Or there might be a hurricane that knocks out all power for a week. (That could easily happen.)

So, I’ve got a few posts lined up in advance.

It’s easy to keep ahead of Smith Sundays. Nobody will ever run out of Smiths. There’s always something to wonder about on Wednesdays, and Friday Finds—there’s a lot of good stuff to share. Books, music, interesting websites. Not usually a problem to find something. Tuesday Tips are a little harder, but they usually pop up.

The hardest days, sometimes, are Mondays and Thursdays. The “happy” days. (Saturdays aren’t so easy either, but silliness is a special case.)

In the beginning, the Monday and Thursday posts were relatively easy to turn out. As time has passed, however, it begins to seem harder and harder to find a miracle or something for which to be thankful. Which is odd to me, because I have been and (knock wood) continue to be pretty lucky in my life. Many good things have happened, continue to happen and I am thankful for all of them.

It seems, however, that there is a miracle even in the difficulty. When the miracles start to run into each other, and I have trouble picking one out, it might be that I am unobservant. But I prefer to think that I am living in such abundance that it’s just that the whole thing is a miracle.

The trick is to remember it.

It’s always better

When I plan ahead.

Living in the moment is good. You don’t want to miss the present because you’re lamenting the past or worrying about the future. And bitter experience has taught me that plans come unraveled all the time. If you’re not flexible, you’re miserable.

That said, I am thankful today for those times when I plan ahead for those things that can make life easier.

It’s the little things.

Getting all the good china and silver out the day before the holiday meal. Having wrapping paper on hand before the gifts even come into the house. Encouraging my sister to test the online video call software before Christmas is actually upon us and my mom wants to see her grandchildren. (Okay. That’s a big thing.)

There are lots of little habits and “be prepared” actions that make life simpler. I’m not advocating OCD-like behavior, but the MotH* really wants coffee in the mornings, and he won’t drink it without milk, and he gets kind of grumpy about it. So, checking that we have milk—to say nothing of coffee—is one way to have a quiet life. (To be fair, if we screw that up, he’s perfectly willing to get on his bicycle and go down to the 7-Eleven.)

Today, I am thankful that I planned ahead about this blog.

Can you imagine having to interrupt a video call with the nieces and nephews or, heaven forfend, your own present opening to sit down and draft a blog post? When your mother is visiting?

That’s just not a good scenario.

So, I am a little bit proud of myself that I thought ahead. These may not be the best blog posts ever, but I got them done and scheduled before company arrived.

I am issuing metaphorical gold stars to myself.

I am also wondering a little what plainly self-evident thing I have forgotten to do that will have jumped up to bite me between the time I schedule this post and the time it appears. There’s bound to be something.

Oh, well.

Maybe it will make a good post for the future!

* MotH = Man of the House

The slippery mind

I have one.

The night before last, as I was writing yesterday’s blog post, I had a great idea for today’s. It was so good that I debated with myself. Should I write it instead of the Scissor Fit post? I decided, no, I would write the Scissor Fit post and save this new idea for another day.

And, you know what happened then, right?

I didn’t write it down.

Aaaaaaaarggggggghhhhh!

The days when I could effortlessly recall every little thing seem to be gone. I can still recite huge chunks of plays I did in my giddy youth. There are poems that are permanently lodged in my brain. But the reason I came into this room two seconds ago. . .not so much.

Now, I’m not saying that I never used to forget things.

It’s a fact that about once every seven years, I would be peacefully sitting at home, about to have a lovely meal I had cooked myself, when the phone would ring and somebody would say, “Where are you?” and I would have to rush out to some important meeting that had completely slipped my mind. It was always upsetting and embarrassing, but it truly only happened about once every seven years—and almost never after I got my Palm Pilot. (I still say the Palm Pilot has the best reminder application!)

Nowadays, I rarely have meetings I am supposed to attend, but I do have other things I am planning. There are things I want to pick up at the store, blog posts I want to write, little tidbits of news I want to tell a friend or relative. It’s a bit worrisome that they slip my mind more often than they used to do.

I think it’s because I have more time than I used to have. Few things have to be done today; there’s always tomorrow. There’s a nice leisurely feel to that—except that I always seem to be busier now than I was in the days when I had a full-time job and rehearsals every night—but it does seem to rust the old steel trap.

I think one of my New Year’s Resolutions might have to be to memorize some monologues or a sonnet or two.

Just to see if I still can.

Nothing in the world

Can take the place of persistence.

I’ve mentioned part of this quote from Calvin Coolidge previously. Here, as a matter of fact.

The whole quote—one of my favorites is:

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

The reason I bring it up today is that I am thankful for persistence.

Today is the 180th straight day of blog posts here. Six months. Six months of figuring out something to post, of preparing it, of setting up the appropriate links, adding the appropriate tags, scheduling the post and hitting the Publish button.

If you think that’s easy, you’ve never tried it.

But, I made a commitment to myself that I was going to do it, and I have persisted. Some posts have been better than others. Some days, I have had to drag my feet out of the muck and mud of I-don’t-feel-like=it, and push through the boy-this-post-stinks, and overcome the is-anybody-there-nobody’s-reading-it-anyway bugaboo. (“Bugaboo” — ‘now there’s a word to lift your hat to.’*)

So, I’m thankful for persistence, today.

Every time you face a challenge you get better at it. Not only do you get better at achieving that particular goal, you get better at achieving all goals. Once you prove that you can, it’s very hard to fall back on ‘I can’t.’

I was reminded of this recently, not only by my 180 day anniversary, but also by one of those not-so-rare bursts of synchronicity in a post on this same topic over at Dumb Little Man. (Good blog, Dumb Little Man. Just FYI.)

Of course, later today, persistence in dieting (another of my current goals, albeit a bit half-hearted) will likely fall by the wayside. I’m thinking fresh baked chocolate cookies and vanilla ice cream—a treat I first had at Joe Allen’s in the heart of the Theatre District in NYC. (I think Joe Allen’s may be the first restaurant I ever went to in NY after I moved there—although I didn’t have the cookies and ice cream that time.)

You have to have a balance, after all. Dieting can pause for a moment for a little celebration.

180 days!

* Luce, William (and Emily Dickinson), The Belle of Amherst

Choices — aaaagh!

‘Life is in the minding.‘

Saturdays and Sundays in this blog don’t have a theme. They are wide open.

Any subject.

Any subject at all.

Consequently, with the universe from which to choose, it is sometimes hard to think of anything to write.

Why is that?

I’m not sure, but today I think it has something to do with some lines that have always resonated with me from Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love.

Will you be a poet, or a scholar?
I don’t mind.
Oh, it helps to mind. Life is in the minding.

There is something about choices. It’s great to have them, but they can be overwhelming.

Have you ever walked into a library or a bookstore and left without any books? Or a video rental store and gone home to watch reruns of Law & Order?

Maybe it’s just me, but I enter such establishments with anticipation. I’m going to find something great to read or watch. And I wander up and down the aisles looking at everything that is on offer on the shelves. Picking up this movie, flipping through those pages. Do I feel like watching a comedy or a thriller? Do I want to read Jane Austen or Maya Angelou? And as I ponder these choices I begin to hyperventilate.

Figuratively speaking.

I mean, I don’t have to breathe into a paper bag or anything.

I just find myself thinking sometimes, when I have a lot of choices, “oh, just forget it!” and walking out without anything.

It’s not an option when you have a blog post to write.

Or…I guess it could be. We could declare Silent Saturdays. Seems like a cop-out, though, doesn’t it?

I was reading something somewhere (I have got to start taking writing things down! The old memory is not what it used to be) about practicing making choices. The idea was that you should never say “I don’t care” or “It doesn’t matter.” Even if you really don’t care which restaurant you’re going patronize tonight, you should make a choice. Voice a preference.

Art is all about making choices. We better get used to it.

Daunting Deadlines

Daring to dream

I’ve been thinking about deadlines a lot lately. Not surprising, really. After all, I’ve just started a blog. People can talk all they want about “blog” being short for “weblog.” It’s really short for “OMG! I haven’t written today’s post yet!”

The really ironic thing about this plunge into blogging is I hate deadlines. I don’t join writers’ groups because I have such a horror of them. The idea of 10 pages a week freaks me out. I can’t imagine being a journalist with a story due every day.

And yet…here I am.

I didn’t think about the deadline part of the blog when I began. I thought about the social media aspects, the marketing possibilities (eek!), the opportunity for self-expression. And, yes, I thought about giving myself a reason to write regularly.

This never translated in my mind into having to write regularly.

You know.

A deadline.

The odd thing is that when I have a deadline, I am more than capable of meeting it. I have pulled all-nighters to write papers and computer programs, to get a website up, to learn software and/or 17^th Century French history (L’etat c’est moi – and that’s about the extent of my French¹), to learn lines, and to drive to Charleston.²

So, why does a writing deadline seem such a burden to me?

I honestly am not sure.

But I guess I’m going to get over it, or crash and burn here. And I guess it’s also true that you always invite into your life that which you need to learn.

So, today’s Monday Miracle is that I made this deadline. And I haven’t run screaming into the night at the thought of all the other deadlines to which I’ve committed. (We used to call them “drop dead dates” at one place I worked. It doesn’t make it sound any better.)

I’m giving myself this opportunity to get past my dread of deadlines. It wasn’t what I thought would come out of this blogging adventure, but it should be useful. After all, as Napoleon Hill once said, “A goal is a dream with a deadline.”

Deadlines are good.

Only, let’s think of another word, okay?

(Comments open for suggestions.)

¹ Except for that tour I did of The Little Prince and those few scenes I learned phonetically.
² Charleston. Also The Little Prince tour. Van broke down, transmission had to be rebuilt overnight, 8 am curtain at a school – long story.

Why aren’t you writing?

The obstacle course

You say you want to write. You start a project. And then you stop.

Why?

It’s pretty fashionable these days to attribute all lack of forward motion to fear. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear that your mother will be mad that you used her in your novel (she won’t—she won’t even recognize herself), fear that you won’t have anything to say (you will), fear that your writing will reveal something about you that you don’t want people to know (yes, but probably not the way you think).

Some of those fears can and will stand in the way.

But sometimes it’s other stuff.

You’re lazy.
You’re busy.
You’re tired.
You’re bored.
You’re on Facebook.

Set a timer for ten minutes if you’re lazy. You only have to write for ten minutes.

Are you busy with what you really want to be doing? Don’t let the urgent crowd out the important.

Resolve to get more sleep. Write first thing in the morning. Before you have time to get tired.

You’re bored? Best cure for that…tell yourself a story. And write it down.

You’re on Facebook? There’s no getting around that one. You’ve gotta get off Facebook. Just for a while. (You can always set up a blog and link it to Facebook. Two birds. One stone. It could work. When I’ve figured that part out, I’ll let you know. Except I won’t have to announce it. If you’ve already friended me on Facebook, you’ll see it happen.)

The point is there are always obstacles. Are you going to let them stop you? Or are you going to get past them?

Over, around, under, through.

Whatever it takes.

Are we in a time warp?

Tuesday Tips

Here’s a tip for you on this lovely Tuesday morning: You probably want to avoid launching a blog in the middle of a business trip. Especially if you are using all of the wonderful but somewhat wacky free software that is available to make your life ~~a living hell~~ easier.

Now, to be fair, I launched this website last week. But I didn’t try to incorporate an email feed until—oh, somewhere around Wednesday. And guess what? Everything worked fine.

Except the part where it’s supposed to email blog posts on the day they post.

Because the email part of the blog is a day late and a dollar short. (Well, no dollars are changing hands—so that part’s not true. But it is a day late.)

That means that if you are reading this blog via email, you are wondering why I haven’t realized that it’s actually Wednesday and not Tuesday. The thing is, I know that it’s probably Wednesday where you are. Over here in blog land, however, it’s been Tuesday since Monday.

See, I wrote the Monday post on Sunday. And I scheduled it to go out on Monday. And, if you are reading this on my website or via RSS feed, all is well. But if you subscribed to get the posts by email, you are getting things the day after they post.

I don’t know why.

I’m using free software. Free software has a hidden cost. No help. Anywhere. All kinds of forums where well-meaning and sometimes surprisingly knowledgeable users try to help you, yes, with extraordinary generosity. But no actual tech support. And, for me, that rarely works. Because I am an odd mixture. I have a great deal of knowledge about a wide range of software applications—and pockets of ignorance that would swallow Montana. So, when I run into a problem, it’s usually something totally bizarre. If it were not, I’d have solved it.

So, please bear with me while I try to solve this problem (which might be easier if I were not in airports and hotels and play readings). In the meantime, if you’re getting this by email, the space-time continuum has not slipped its leash.

It really is Wednesday where you are.

Probably.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Tag Archives: Blogging