Episode #99: What Do I Say When It's All Been Said?

<---Amazing what you can find when you suddenly remember you have Google everything in your life.

I've been retired for almost a year now (November 1, 2020), and I've never realized just how hard it's been to come up with interesting snippets of my life to blog about. 

Considering how many posts I've written in the past 13+ years (about 1500 give or take), this says a lot. But ever since the man made you-know-what (no, this isn't a conspiracy but a fact of life that MSM does not want to admit), my life has become depressingly (at times) predictable.

It wasn't always like this. I actually had some worthwhile, time-consuming, soul enhancing (for me at least) projects lined up: writing, rearranging my den, moving my c.d.collection to my den from the bedroom and whatever else I could find to occupy my time. So I actually got to work on my writing at the end of 2020 (reworked a now unpublished e-book) with the goal of publishing it in 2021.

But as the new year rolled around, things began to change, so to speak. I made some tweaks to a few personal and cyber relationships. Decided to hardcore self-quarantine, and by doing that, fell into that self-sufficient/auntie social state of mind which never really went away. I did my twice daily walks, usually keeping to my end of town instead of exploring other sections (that is my intent for 2022 though); chilled on YT and FB (actually cut FB back to about twice a day for fifteen to twenty minutes a clip); ran an optional errand or two (usually banking); writing while listening to instrumental music (this was/is a very recent occurrence ever since I had to temporarily relocate to the dining room).

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

The only real change to this routine was the fact that I wasn't really doing  any "original" writing, only massive re-writes of either previously published stuff or unpublished completed manuscripts (yes, I do have P.T. Barnum's Jumbo Elephant in my basement patiently waiting for me). So far, I have one completed rewrite, including a new title that actually makes sense. That was the one that was ruined by a mini-flood in the basement that was not caused by the great outdoors, but by massive plumbing leak in the kitchen (this was determined by the basement guy that we had come to visit the other day).

The other I've been chipping away at, writing about 500 words per day, give or take, with lots of breaks for hand fatigue. So far I have roughly 8 chapters completed (have been splitting the old chapters in two to make it more digestible), which I'm very happy about, and also came up with a brand new (albeit temporary) title, which I'm also happy about.

Basically though, this is my how my current life is: very rock steady and just a little bit redundant.

So, it looks like I'm going have to retool and give serious thought about what I need to change what my posts should now be about. Wish me luck.

{c} 2021 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #98: Rules For Me, But Not For Thee

I'm not a big fan of censorship, especially when it comes to writing, and more specifically when it comes to my writing. In fact, the only time I will accept censorship of my writing is if I'm doing the censoring.

I have mellowed out over the years when it comes to my own writing being censored and no longer have the vitriolic responses from years gone by when it happens. Instead, I simply take a long mental health break from the source and thus find somewhere else to peddle my wares, so to speak, until I'm willing to return to that source.

However, this post is not about being censored, although I could on a very long diatribe about the personal censorship I've going through in the past 14+ years, but about equal application of whatever rules that happen to be in place, for wherever you may happen to be, whether real world or the cyber world.

I recently left a group on FB because of the unequal application of the group rules. I'm of the iron-clad belief that if you're going to apply certain rules to the masses, you better 100% apply those certain rules to yourself as well. Nothing less will pass muster with me, as far as I'm concerned.

This, sadly, was not the case. The head admin for the group was iron-clad adamant that things could only be posted on a certain day of the week, and no other. To do so would risk the wrath of the admins, thus being a bad boy/girl in their eyes and thus having the offending post nuked. But apparently the same rules they applied to the members with a mace club simply did not apply to them. They were free to post whatever, whenever, and you weren't allowed to post out the blatant hypocrisy of it.

I actually tried pointing this issue out, and I basically got the old "so sad, too bad" response, along with having a comment deleted. Once that happened, I decided that it wasn't worth having a major flame war about it. Instead, I just simply walked away and called it a day. In truth, it's not something I'm going to miss, since a large percentage of the time, there was a lot of inertia, which I believe was due to other members finding other groups that were a little more accommodating/flexible with their rules.

Like I said, I'm not a fan of censorship, on any level, be it cyber space or the real world. But I do expect an even application of whatever rules that happen to be in force for a given place. It will take me a very long time to find another group topic that I'll be comfortable in being part of without having to worry about rules being unequally applied. And that is a very sad thing indeed.

{c} 2021 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #97: To Be Retired Is Never Having A To-Do List

And thus, when a business is purchased by a larger corporation, it soon gets moved to another town, thus leaving the previous town with nothing but memories and lost tax dollars.

Picture is of the former home of Keeney Manufacturing. It was purchased either late last year or early this year by a conglomo who closed it and moved it to another town.

Anyways, today's post has really nothing to do with that. Found out about it a few weeks ago from our local town rag, so I want to briefly mention about a longtime institution that closed, thus taking jobs and monies elsewhere.

Today's post is about having find things to do in order to keep from being a major bag of Idahoan potatoes. I just recently finished my last writing project, with applying the edits and coming up with a more fitting title. Currently, it's sitting next to me on a chair waiting for me to reduce my c/c balance down to something a bit more manageable before moving on to the expensive required items.

In my case, since a lot of things that I WANTED TO DO are in limbo due to currently inhabitable status of the basement from this past July's mini-flooding, about the only I could do was to find yet another writing project to work on. At this point, actual originality has gone completely out the window, only to be replaced by wholesale deconstructing and rewriting previously partials/completed stories, with this particular choice being a member of the latter.

This was something that I had originally completed back in 2015 and had passed onto a former FB friend, who was a freelance writer/editor and a raging Canadian TDS sufferer (she had unfriended/blocked me because i dared to make a comparison between his royal heinie Trudeau and our President Trump). While I didn't appreciate being unfriended and blocked about a year after this editing job, I did take another read of her e-mail slicing and dicing my writing, and I found a few points that 5 1/2 years later I do agree on.

She stated that (at the time) I was overly dramatic with my writing and the plot line was extremely convoluted like a bad Hallmark movie (last part mine), in that I had the main characters doing the old cliche flower thing. There were a few other small points that I now do but didn't back then.

So I'm going way back to the drawing board with this, as in re-reading this thing from the beginning so that I can basically: figure out what the plot should be; what the character names should be; and figure out what the sub-plots should be. And this will be accomplished by me actually taking notes.

Yeah, looks like I'm going to make the transition to planner from pantster. This should be all kinds of fun for me, since I'm a terrible note taker.

Yay me.

(c} 2021 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserve