A Writer's Lament

Okay.  I have to think of a good opening sentence for this little essay.  Good opening sentences are vital because they can make a reader want to read further or turn them off.  So I have to think of something that will grab a person and hold their attention.

But what if I have a great opening sentence and the rest of my essay is stupid?  I’ll have to take that chance.  I am not a stupid person.  At least, I’ve been told I’m intelligent, so I have to believe it.  So okay, my essay is not likely to turn out stupid.  Dullness is another thing.  My writing could be dull after I grabbed a person’s attention and made them read more than the opening sentence.  The poor reader will never forgive me for the boredom that ensues.  They will blame me for wasting time out of their life and for the disappointment that comes when my writing doesn’t meet their expectations.

What is a writer to do?  Writing an exciting piece that engages a reader all the way through requires work.  It takes thought, imagination, a good vocabulary, and other writing tools.  A humor writer even needs a good sense of humor, without which you can’t write anything funny.  This is a lot to ask of a person whose only desire is to put words on a computer screen and have people read them and like what they read.  But whoever said life was easy?

So here I am, trying to think of a way to open an essay that will, hopefully, turn out to be something that will give a reader some enjoyment.  If you are reading this, I hope you appreciate me.

This Could End Up Being Anything, And It Did

March 24, 2022

I’m late getting to this today.  But I have set a goal to write one blog entry per day, so here I am.  I have no idea where this is going or how long or short it will be.  If you want to take this ride with me, read on.

I had a lot to do today, starting with a required online Zoom class, the subject of which was Type 2 Diabetes.  I have Type 2 Diabetes, and I didn’t learn very much about it that I didn’t know before.  The class was fun, though, and it lasted less than an hour because only two of us had questions that were quickly answered.  The course was required for those of us who want to join the Barrie Diabetes Institute and take advantage of their doctors and diabetes instructors.  My primary care doctor wants me to join that group.  It looks like a good deal, even though they are located in Manhattan, and that means having to arrange transportation or pay for an Uber both ways.  I hope I can avoid Uber.

Anyway, that is my big excuse for being late sitting at the computer and writing.  I also showered, talked to a friend on the phone, and chatted with my best friend online.  Those are good excuses for not sitting down and writing, although Stephen King would probably not agree.  He’s making a lot more money than I am right now, though, so I don’t have to feel like I should listen to him all the time.

I would love to sit down and write a short short story or something really artistic that requires some thought, planning, and imagination.  Maybe I’ll start on that tomorrow.  I don’t have any diabetes classes to take tomorrow.

 

Reminiscences of the Old Days

If you remember these, you're officially old.

March 23, 2022

I don’t know what this is going to turn out to be.  I’ll keep writing and see what comes out.

I’m sitting here in front of my computer, typing this.  Across the room, my TV is playing an old Jack Benny program.  It’s early in the morning, and a couple of cable stations are playing shows to benefit us old enough to remember them.  That would be me, among others.  The Jack Benny Program is one of my favorites.  Others are Dragnet, Leave It to Beaver, Dennis the Menace, Father Knows Best, and Hazel, all of which play on cable TV, one after the other, on weekday mornings.  It is a cornucopia of reminiscences.  Perry Mason also plays on weekday mornings, but that one requires attention to a plot.  It’s not good background TV.

It amazes me how normal life on those programs seems to me.  There are no computers, cell phones, laptops, or tablets in evidence.  People talk on old-fashioned dial telephones, and sometimes they have party lines.  Texting is unknown.  If you call someone and the line is busy, you’re out of luck.  You have to keep trying until someone hangs up.  To anyone born after 1990, this must seem like a nightmare scenario.  To someone like me, who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, it’s life as we knew it.  We didn’t know any better.

Old hairstyles and clothes fashions are something else.  Seeing those on TV can elicit laughs as well as sighs of recognition.  They also bring back memories of the discomfort we went through to look good and be in fashion.  Anyone who has ever tried to sit modestly in a pencil skirt or, even worse, a miniskirt knows what I mean.  The memory of the torture we females had to go through every night to set their hair on rollers and bobby pins then try to sleep on them brings on a case of the trembles today.  Handheld hair dryers came out in the 1920s, so they were nothing new.

How did I find that out?  I just now Googled it.  Back in the day, we couldn’t do that.  If we wanted to find anything out, we had to go to a library or an encyclopedia and look it up.  How’s that for time-consuming inconvenience?  Again, we didn’t know any better.  I hate to seem like an old fogey, but you youngsters have it easy, at least as long as the new technology works well.  That’s a subject for a whole other essay, though.

 

Journal Entry for March 8, 2022

 

March 8, 2022

I don’t know what to say here.  My life isn’t exciting.  I never competed in the Olympics.  I am not a CEO of a Fortune 500 company.  I don’t travel the world and write about my adventures.  I don’t have adventures, at least not deliberately.  If I have an adventure, it is strictly by accident and probably not something I wanted to happen.  So why am I bothering to write about my life?

The funny thing is, other people find my life more interesting than I do.  For example, when I tell people I used to sing opera, I get a reaction like it is a fascinating thing.  It was a lot of work, rejection interspersed with some acceptance and a good deal of loneliness.  However, when I gave a good performance that went just right and got a good response from the audience, there was nothing like it.  So yes, I guess that part of my life can be considered interesting.  Most people don’t sing opera for various reasons, and I did.  I still would if anyone wanted to hire a 76-year-old former soprano who doesn’t have a High C anymore but still has the rest of the voice well intact.

I do sing in church every Sunday and whenever they have a funeral or a wedding.  People in the neighborhood have been known to stop me on the street and ask me if I am the lady who sings in church.  Apparently, they like my voice.  That always gives me a lift.  It makes me feel good to know that I am reaching people with my singing, even though it is easy music and not always very inspiring.  I try to sing it in a way that will move people.  It’s nice to know that I sometimes succeed.

In the meantime, though, mainly being retired, I sit in my apartment almost every day and try to find something to occupy myself.  This isn’t easy.  I take that back.  It would be a lot easier if I would pay more attention to things, like online exercise programs offered by my local senior center.  When I do pay attention and attend these, I feel better.  The problem is getting myself going.  Exercise is a dirty word.  I don’t even like to walk to church anymore, although my church is only a couple of blocks from where I live.  I usually take an Uber car.  This not only keeps me from exercising by walking, but it also revs up my credit card balance.  That doesn’t keep me from calling Uber every Sunday, going and coming.  Sometimes, I think I singlehandedly keep the Uber company going in The Bronx.

If, after all this, you still think my life is interesting, go ahead.  I don’t find it as interesting as you do, but maybe with a bit of help, I’ll stir it up a little.

Journal Entry for March 7, 2022

March 7, 2022

Here I am again, sitting and writing whatever comes into my mind.  If this turns out to be a decent piece of literature, I will be happy, but that is not necessary.  It is essential that I am writing again.

My blood sugar level continues to give me enough concern that I monitor it closely.  I should also be concerned about my weight, but I haven’t hit bottom on that yet.  If the pictures taken at the restaurant where we celebrated my late birthday last week don’t cause me to stop and go back on Weight Watchers, I don’t know what will.  I was the biggest thing in the room, especially compared to my friend Joan, who had been sick and looked thin in the pictures, and I looked like an elephant next to a meerkat.

My hair is another thing.  I have the I-haven’t-been-to-a-hairdresser-in-two-years COVID-19 look, with hair hanging halfway down my back.  I look like a late 1960s hippie.  I am nervous about going to a hairdresser for two reasons:  (1) I’m still afraid of COVID germs; and (2) I don’t know what kind of haircut I want.  Number 2 is quickly settled.  Number 1 will take some doing.  If I trust myself in someone else’s hands, I want those hands to be COVID-free.  Since I cannot guarantee that, I might have to table any plans to cut my hair soon and look up some long-hair styles.

The hippie look is complete when I decide to wear a tie-dyed blouse like in those pictures in the restaurant.

This reminds me.  I am now seventy-six years old.  If sixty is the new middle-age, I am getting well enough past it to be entering into old lady territory.  I am not ready to be an old lady yet.  If I live to be ninety or one-hundred, I’ll be an old lady, and even then, I’ll think about it.  I hope the march of middle-age will keep up with my aging so that I will always be a younger woman, even when I am white-haired and in a wheelchair.  I know, this doesn’t make sense.  Neither do half the things I say.  I’m like that.

In the meantime, here I am, sitting and writing journal entries and editing a building newsletter every month.  At least that’s something.

Journal Entry for March 5, 2022

March 5, 2022

Well, here I am again.  I have a feeling this is going to be short, although I could have a lot to say if I wanted to say it.

This has been a tough week, starting with Monday, when my blood glucose levels were higher than usual, and I couldn’t get them down.  I did the logical thing.  I called my endocrinologist’s office.  Talk about frustrating and weird.  The secretary kept telling me she was busy.  I kept telling her my blood sugar level was up, and I needed to talk to someone.  I finally got to speak to a nurse(?), who told me the doctor would call me “within three business days.”  WHAT?!  I argued with her, of course, and she finally told me the doctor would call me back the same day.

Of course, the doctor didn’t call me back.  I was only experiencing a crisis, after all.  Phooey!

I called my primary care doctor’s office and spoke to a medical assistant, who calmed me down and gave me advice.  The doctor was not in the office that day, but I was able to get ahold of her on the phone, in person, the next day.  Again, she gave me decent advice and reassured me I wasn’t dying.

My blood sugar level went down, praise God, although it is still not going down as far as it was.  At least it’s on a decent level now, and I know that I can adjust the level of my insulin injections if I have to do that.

The endocrinologist finally called me, but it wasn’t because of my glucose problem.  She wanted to tell me that she would be leaving the office soon and setting up private practice in an office too far away from me to be convenient.  I say good riddance.  I was going to fire her, anyway.  Now it will happen naturally.

I sang the Ash Wednesday Mass at my church and got the ashes on my forehead like a good Catholic.

I also sang two back-to-back funerals this morning at 9:00 and 10:00 AM.  I was in reasonably good voice and sang well, praise God.  I got a $6 tip for the first funeral.  The lady gave me and the organist $12, which we split evenly.

Later, when I tried to call my friend Joan, I couldn’t get through to her.  I ended up helping her out by getting in touch with Optimum on her behalf and getting them to fix her problem from their office.  Of course, trying to get a live person to speak to was a Herculean task, but I did it, and it worked.  They restored her phone connection.

This is turning out to be longer than I thought it would be.  That’s fine.

Journal Entry for February 26, 2022

 

February 26, 2022

Today is Saturday.  When I was still working full-time in the old days, that meant something.  Now it only means that all the morning television shows that I turn on during the week are missing, and I have to search to find something good on TV.  Since I tend to use the TV as background noise, this should not be important, but it is.  I am very spoiled.

I have chosen a Harry Potter marathon as my TV-in-the-background choice today.  That is always safe, except for the later Harry Potter movies, which are more complicated than the others, and I can’t just look in on them occasionally and know precisely what is going on.  Of course, I could stop whatever else I am doing (such as writing this journal entry) and concentrate on watching the movie, but that would involve actual concentration, which is work.

Somebody (Voldemort, I think) just yelled “Avada Kedavra” at someone in one of Harry’s dreams.  That was dramatic enough to get me to stop and look.

These writing exercises are working, at least to the extent that they get me to sit down and put words into the computer.  They also inspire me to try to be at least a little bit funny.  Now I just have to find a suitable subject and write a real piece of literature.  Literature is challenging, especially if you are not inclined to be a “literary” writer.  This is the kind of writer that does well in creative writing classes because the teacher thinks they are so talented and so ... well ... literary.  I can’t write that way to save all the money in the world and my life.  When I write a short story, it has to have a decent plot, strong characters, and a lot of humor.  That might get me a grudging A-minus in a creative writing class, but it won’t get me a spot in a literary magazine.

How did I go from Harry Potter movies to literary magazines?  Talk about meandering!

At any rate, here I am, sitting at the computer, actually writing something, for the third day in a row.  This has to be a record for me.  Now I just have to keep it up.