Minnesota is home; not where I live.  It is unlikely I will ever live their again, but it is that fantasy land of childhood where play and responsibility hold hands and memories grow stronger.  There are four seasons in Minnesota, except many years spring and fall are seen only by those who choose to believe they exist.  It is the farmers who remind the rest of us that spring has indeed sprung.

I used to think that Groundhog’s Day was poorly positioned in the calendar year.  To believe that spring is approaching in a Minnesota February is a terrible waste of hope.  Yet every February Second the news would report that spring was upon us, or we’d have just two more weeks of winter.  Teachers would report to their students, “Two more weeks!” but we knew by the time we had reached school-age that winter lasted forever.  Teachers could not fool us.

These eternal winters train a person to accept the death of all things.  The end of January, forty-below.  Sun rays like cannon-fire through picture windows; you know it’s all a ruse. 

writing and living well.

Since I am a writer, I do not fall in love with principles.  Most often principles are hat-stands designed for people who wear hats to cover bald spots.  Sometimes they are true.  In his book Outliers: The Story of Success (Amazon Affiliate Link), Malcom Gladwell talks about 10,000 hours of practice as if these hours were some sort of principle.  Immediately I want to dismiss him, until he stops writing about Bill Gates and starts to include composers; then I must listen.

I write Ream of Paper with about 7,000 hours of practice under my belt, not enough to be great by Gladwell’s or any other set of standards.  But I practice.  Think about, and I mean give it a quick guesstimate, not the whole of your afternoon, how many hours you have spent writing.  How many hours have you practiced?

My first crack at writing a novel, I chalk up to pure diligence.  Your collection of poetry that no one will buy is not a loss; it is a reminder of 1,500 hours

Every couple of weeks I try to point you to a great online place to kill some time.  Occasionally time needs killing.  If you’ve got a couple moments running around aimlessly this weekend, I suggest:

The sticky note has never been such a useful tool.  Find a tiny piece of viral art at thingsweforget.blogspot.com.  Found this site on Twitter thanks to The Daily Letter, who is, as you’ve already discovered, awesome.

And if you are a writer, visit YingleYangle – two dudes who blog about writing.  Stephen Maher is a librarian, so you know he is a mad reader, and Paulo Campos is, well – I’m not sure what he is but he writes great stuff for other writers.  Check them out for daily prompts and ideas.

(This is part 5 of a non-preachy, memoir-ish thing about faith. It begins here. There are links to subsequent installments in each post.)

Deconstructive Year

What they don’t tell you at Personal Transformation University is this: when one is becoming something new, the first thing that happens is dishonor, then death. This omission is the direct result of pretending there is a place one can learn life lessons apart from experience. There is no PTU, only aging and attention.

No one tells you that when you quit your job as a truck driver to become a baker, all of your truck-driving friends will think you’re stupid. They’ll say, “He’s becoming a baker because he is addicted to food.” Or, “She is doing this because of pain and anger.” You’ll say, “No, I’m not.” Your friends will say, “Yes, you are.” And you have no shred of proof to the contrary. None; only an argument. Your truck-driving buddies might be a little right. So what? The argument doesn’t matter.

Your blog, your business, your business copy, your kids, your recovery group, your faith, your friendships, your hobby…

You can describe things that are important to you.  If I asked you to tell me about your business, would you ramble off your company’s mission statement, manufacturing procedures and annual revenues?  Or when asked about your children, would you start listing their vital statistics?  “Joey is four-foot nine.  He wears size 2 shoes.  He has brown hair.”

You wouldn’t.

“When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.  The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it.  A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.  You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate.”  –  Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners

But statements are easy, so we keep stating them.  We pretend the statement tells the whole story.

It is easy to substitute should for like. I should write. Blogging is like writing. Why write when you can write about writing? Why paint when you can post a picture of your old painting? Why rest? Why produce? Why organize?

Anyone else easily sated when you sit down to do some sort of creative work?