EarWorms and Alarms

So, I wake up every morning to a song. I always hated the old alarm clocks that blared sirens and bells and whistles at me, so I bless the smart phone and the ability to load up a nice tune to sing me awake.

What do I have for my wake up song? Martin Sexton's "Over My Head". It is gentle, tuneful, and perhaps one of my most favorite songs, ever. Waking up to it just about guarantees I'll have it on my brain -- or in my ear -- for the rest of the day, and so far I'm okay with that.

But last week I was prescribed some medication that has a very specific window of time I have to take it in. It has to be taken between 4:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m., and then I can't eat for 30-60 minutes after taking it. Now, anyone who knows me knows that 4:00 a.m. is out of the question, unless I haven't been to bed, yet.

See, here's the way my day works. "Over My Head" starts playing at 8:00, and I lie in bed doing some social media work -- and yes, it IS work for me -- until about 8:45, which is when I have to get up and check and report the rain gauge. By the time I do that, enough time has passed that I can eat before I go to the gym. Then I do some gardening, more social media and research, and if I'm really "on", some writing before Hubby gets home, and then when he goes to bed, I really knuckle down with the writing.

But I know myself. If I don't have a special reminder while this pill-taking business is so new, I might forget. So I set another alarm. And this one may crack you up. It does me. I have it set for 8:05 a.m. -- so far I've remembered to take the pill when the first alarm goes off every day except one, but that one day the second alarm saved the day. I'm hopeless.

What is the second alarm, though? It wouldn't work to have the same song, would it? So I have Melissa Etheridge's "The Letting Go" for the second song. 

Problem is, this song is also a favorite, and an earworm that has potential to last all day. So what happens? I get the confused earworm that goes a little something like this:

"I came here to let you know, the letting go has taken place...this boy in a boat that I am, through the haze I can catch a glimpse of the damage that's been done. Isn't that what we wanted, all along? Freedom like a stone, and my pockets full of sand...I'm over my head!"

I don't mind it, so far. Soon I'll feel confident enough in taking the pill on the first alarm that I won't need to have the second, and these pleasant earworms are antidote against other songs that invade my ears during the day.

Does this ever happen to you? What is your best earworm? (Please don't tell me your worst!)




    

Spring Stream of Consciousness

Boy, the blog post was the furthest from my radar this week, and coming into this morning I looked at my to-do list and saw “Blog Post” and realized, I got nothing. So we’re going to go with a stream of consciousness.

I don’t know about where you are, but here in the Pacific Northwest, we’re going through the throes of spring madness. I got all excited about planting our garden. We had been waiting and waiting to even fill our new garden beds with soil because “it’s still winter” then all the sudden the trees are blooming, it’s 60 degrees out during the day, and people are talking about planting peas. And here we are with no soil, even. So while the weather was nice for a few days, we brought in four pickup loads of soil from Lane Forest Products, our local go-to for yard and garden products, and filled up nine raised beds and three old truck tires—shoot, I just realized I never bought the beans! We put in peas, but no beans, darn it! Told you this was stream of consciousness. Anyway, now I’ve also planted a beet (beat) box, a ton of onions, and started a bunch of plant seeds under a grow house. There’s even some tiny lettuce plants in there already.

I’m super excited, but I’m also very nervous. It’s been over 5 years since I’ve had a garden, and while I was never close to being an expert, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten most of what I knew about when to start plants, and spacing, and transplanting...all that good stuff. Hubby and I recognized that this year is going to be just a crap shoot as to whether we succeed or fail, but we’re hoping to have a good supply of our own green groceries. I plan to try my hand at canning some stuff, too.

As nervous as I am, I very much enjoy gardening. It is fun to get my hands dirty, and once things start peeking out of the ground, it becomes this satisfying miracle to nurture the plants and see them through to harvest. It’s still really early for it. March has really decided to come in like a lion this year. The temps have dipped, and the rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling down, down... (Hey hey hey hey!) (There’s the stream again, taking me down with Simple Minds...)

We still have much to do in the yard, too. We’re going to put in a small blueberry hedge, and some fruit trees, if we can find dwarf stock. Gotta make the best use we can out of our tiny lot. About an 8th of the yard still needs to be leveled out, and walk-on bark put down, and then (at last!) we’ll be able to gravel the driveway, which I can’t wait to do. (No more mud and sand getting tracked into the house!) But all of that depends upon the rain stopping long enough to dig in the dirt without creating a mud pie. Which we already did, once. What a mess that was! Then we can move the sheds around to their permanent homes, and tear down the last of the old shed. Oh, and by the time things dry out, we’ll want to have the well back up and running. That will be an advantage over paying for city water to water the garden.

So much to do, but you know what, I’m super glad to be home and working on it this year. This is the first summer since 2010 that we will be home, and I am totally psyched for it. I always got twitchy on the truck, wishing my hands were getting dirty with soil rather than grease and carbon soot and whatever else we got out hands into while loading and unloading the trailer.

What do you do in the spring? What are your plans for summer?

Writer’s Conference = Productivity!

It’s a beautiful day outside the window of my writing cave. I wish I had gone for a bike ride instead of driving to the gym to work out, but let’s face it. It wasn’t this nice when my schedule dictated I head to the gym. 

What? you say. Kristi with a schedule? How bizarre. Tell me about it.

Last weekend I went to the 21^st Annual South Coast Writer’s Conference in Gold Beach. As usual. (I’ve only missed 5 of the 21, I think.) This year I got a lot of bang for my buck. Not that I don’t normally, but this year they had some great speakers on topics I really needed to hear about if I am going to take a proper crack at writing full time.

Managed to get SOME time on the beach!

I spent Friday in an all-day intensive workshop about the serious business of writing, facilitated by Jason Brick. One of many things he taught that really resonated with me is, “The more you don’t want to have a schedule, the more you need one.”

Sigh. So, here I am. Writing a blog post because it is on my newly developed schedule. But you know what, instead of resenting it and fighting it, I’m actually enjoying the process. This is coming off as more “stream of consciousness” writing, but that is part of the plan, too. 

Another presenter, Eric Witchey, taught that there are no wrong ideas. Or more precisely, the only wrong idea in writing is the one that never gets written down.

I came away with so many wonderful tools. Like how to use a Pomodoro timer to focus on my writing. To me it is comparable to what I learned in a 12 Step program: You can do for 30 minutes what you can’t imagine doing all day. Then you take a break and start the timer again. In this way you train yourself to focus and cut out the distractions.

Another tool is also courtesy of Mr. Witchey. Use a metronome to trigger ideas. Train yourself that with every tock of the metronome you come up with one idea – this is great for the brainstorming stage of writing. Each idea may be more wild and outrageous than the last, but something in that maelstrom of ideas will be the perfect torture to put my characters through. 

I anticipate not spending quite so long pondering plot points, but rather coming up with more gut wrenching plots for your entertainment. My goal for the future is to not just entertain you with my stories, but really affect you with them. It’s time to move beyond the fluff, the mind-candy, and make some seriously memorable fiction you’ll want to read again and again.

Part of my new schedule is a promise to myself, and to anyone who does me the honor of following me, to faithfully write a blog post every Wednesday, and to post a newsletter on the first Saturday of each month. I tend to worry about producing content that people will find interesting, but with these new tools, I’m confident I can entertain you. Yes. Confident. Really.

And what do you know—now it's raining! This is all I have for today, but I will surely expand on it for the Newsletter, so keep your eyes open for it. You can sign up on my website - or visit the page to see it posted. I will also post a link to it here in the Bounded in a Nutshell blog.

Until then... Thrive, my friends.