The windings down of January

This blog, for some reason, has always tormented me. I'm a writer, and a prolific one at that, but for some reason it's easier for me to write 50,000 words on Algerian-French relations that write 200 words potentially every other day for this forum.

My return to journaling has been a success. I have managed to write in that every day, every once in a while twice a day. Does it make sense that sometimes I need a sense of connection and reflection in my own life? I think that the technological advances and the speed with which everything changes and is communicated to use might be more detrimental than helpful. Our lives keep speeding up, and I don't want to barrel forward like a speed train. I need more stillness.

January started on very uplifting notes. I won an attendance contest at work and got a $250 Target gift card. My grades came in higher than I expected. I had a really awesome job interview with a nonprofit that supports work I really could support.

But the last week or so seems very bogged down in real world worries, the kind of stuff you can't control. I know I should be thankful that our credit with our fuel oil supplier has covered two fuel drops so far this winter, but instead I worry about how I'm going to pay for the next one. Okay, so maybe not really, but that's the logic my mind follows.

This was back-to-school week for Lafayette College. This also seemed bittersweet because it's my last semester. I don't have classes, only my honors thesis. So I registered for NCUR and looked at the other accepted abstracts from my school. There's someone else doing a presentation on the veil and France. My adviser is trying to facilitate a meeting between the two of us.

I printed out a draft of my honors thesis yesterday and am working on a line by line hand edit. I hope to hand something in to my adviser Tuesday.

I also attended a workshop via the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group on POD with CreateSpace. I'm tempted to publish a werewolf novella as a test. I certainly know the people who could make sure we develop a quality product. I've been against various forms of self-publishing for many years. The two main reasons are that many authors publishing their work independently don't have the skills to create a quality product and the idea that independent publishing can imply that an author does not work well with others.

I have a background in newspapers and some experience in desktop publishing. I went to the workshop interested in the technology. While I sat there I realized two things:

1. I have not done anything with my work for almost two years. No querying, so serious research. I've done some writing and some editing but none with a goal in sight. I've been busy with school and life, but I've also been watching the trends of the publishing industry to understand where I might best succeed. Or perhaps fit.

2. I have a distinct vision of how I want my books to look. I know the artists and graphic designers and even editors that I would love to have working with me.

So, if I'm not doing anything anyway, why not try a POD project?
And if I know what I want it to look like, any other publisher won't allow me that control.

Worth pondering.

Journaling again

Among other goals, I told myself I was going to journal more this year. Open my journal once a day and record something... a high, a low, wax philosophical. And so far it has worked.

When I was younger, I always had my journal open. I carried it everywhere.

Sometimes the entries are for myself. Sometimes they are therapy. Sometimes I intend them as wisdom that I wish to share. Sometimes they are merely lists of facts.  People I saw. Things I read. What I do day-to-day.

With technology changing and electronic formats taking over so much of publishing and media, what will happen to the old-fashioned notebook? Will handwriting be a marker of the ancient past?

Before the invention of recording technology, letters and journals preserved so much of everyone's lives and relationships and I feel like our conversion to electronic communication may make hand-recorded records valuable once again.

My Journal

When I was in high school, a fabulous English teacher somehow got me to go to a writer's conference on the campus of UPenn in Philadelphia. I think I was 16. I started my first official journal in the spiral bound Penn notebook they gave us, while my dad drove me home.

By the time I graduated from college I had more than 100 journals of all shapes and sizes.

I used to number them in the corner, every new one got a number on the inside cover. I stopped this process and I wish I hadn't. It made it easier to put them in order and easier to label exactly how prolific I'd been.

I kept pretty detailed journals during my pregnancy. That changed with the birth of my daughter. Then I journaled when I could, but no longer with the intensity or the frequency that I used to. It got to the point, and this was recently, that my journal entries would be a weekly affair instead of the breaking news format I used to follow.

With some of my recent health issues, I thought I needed to return to as-needed journaling. I wanted to record everything I'm thinking and feeling in order to connect or perhaps disconnect my physical and emotional problems.

I have done this for about three weeks. Maybe four. I'm worrying that these entries are clinical, full of my rants and fears, and make me look like a basket-case. But then I see a glimpse of the old me, and the old journals, with hastily scribbled items like this:

How many thaws from frigid winters
until a heart can no longer be reached
with the frayed and weakening stems
of dandelions held by the tiny hands
of strangers' children?

And I do think that journaling has redirected my attention from social media and also put me more at peace. Now, if only I could make the time to resume my bicycle rides and do some yoga, I might regain some real peace of mind.