4am ramblings

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To paraphrase Billy Joel: it’s 4am on a random day, the regular crowd shambles in, insomnia’s sitting next to me – worn like a loose second skin.

Technically,  insomnia is characterised by difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep as long as desired, by waking too early in the morning and/or feeling tired when one wakes. Despite my best efforts, my shopping basket has come to include all of those items. On the upside, the house is very quiet in the early morning and I generally find that most conducive to creative ramblings and/or catching up on work stuff – so all is not lost.

I usually have something bumbling around in my head when I wake up at oh-my-goodness o’clock – and I mean other than “aargh – it’s oh-my-goodness o’clock – again.” This morning was no exception. With the end of my current work contract in sight (at the end of October), my thoughts are turning increasingly to what I’ll do with what people are referring to as ‘all that extra time’ I’ll apparently have heaps of. All too frequently I’m asked what I plan to do with myself, whether I’ll be going on a long trip, if I intend to hunt for a new job, and so on.

The answer to all and each of those questions appears to be what my brain stews over when I am asleep, although no particular clarity has emerged so far. In essence, and unless I have an early morning epiphany, my plan is to take three months off to contemplate the question. I’d like to get creative in my art shed, garden and kitchen, to finish some projects and start some exciting new ones, to ride my bike and go to the beach more regularly and to generally relax a little. Perhaps even a lot. The New Year will, I feel, be quite soon enough to wrestle with bigger questions – and by then 4am will hopefully be something I know  about, but don’t experience in person quite so often.

In the interim, staying up late, using earplugs to drown out the chickens and determinedly snuggling down when I wake up is helping somewhat: my wake up time is gradually stretching out and I’m feeling more perky as a result. Or could it be that the end of October is approaching and I’m already winding down…?

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A way of thinking

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I’ve occasionally contemplated whether I have a tendency to be pessimistic, since I often see the downside of things as well as the upside. After some thought I’ve concluded that I am, in most instances, simply pragmatic.

Pragmatism is a practical approach both to situations and problems, concentrating on facts rather than ideas or emotions. Instead of a Pollyannaville or Doomsville approach that pushes one towards unrealistic expectations of one sort or another, it’s a ‘hope for the best, plan for the worst’ outlook –  an efficient, organised and utilitarian way of being that allows one to be ready for most eventualities.

Taking the inevitable glass half full / half empty dilemma as a point in case: from the perspective of a pragmatist, it’s never an all-or-nothing scenario: the glass is simply as full as it is – so either drink the contents or don’t. I find this very straight forward and, having made my choice (to drink or not), can simply get on with the next thing and leave the relatively pointless debate to those who feel more in invested in discussion than in outcomes.

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Very probably with age everyone tends to become somewhat more pragmatic and less inclined to get bogged down in situations or endeavours that are unlikely to achieve results. This outlook should, however, not be confused with an inability to get excited at the prospect of Santa’s sack of toys (or some other anticipated event), with  being immune to surprise or with an absence of idealism. It’s simply that a pragmatist is more inclined to try to identify and anticipate likely outcomes on the basis of probabilities and thus cope more efficiently with the vagaries of life.

I have started to question, though, whether a little of the wonder at the world around us might be lost when too large a dose of pragmatism is applied to every situation.

The eye of the beholder

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I was recently in a group of people asked to name the most unusual item in our respective kitchens (ingredient, implement, other – as long as it was a bit quirky). The tricky thing with this question is that I, like most others there, consider my own kitchen to be fairly ordinary. This is a room that’s been equipped to be functional and, in many cases, designed to be attractive. So coming up with ‘the most unusual item’ in amongst the mundane actually equates to figuring out which item someone else might plausibly consider unusual.

Bringing up a mental map of my kitchen and gazing around it, I was hard pressed to see anything out of the ordinary. The butcher’s block, crates, appliances – they all fit in and work in their context. Condiments and tins – perhaps far too many of each – have been stocked with some sort of goal in mind. Cutlery, crockery and so on have accumulated over time and, whilst they may not be my ideal Homes & Garden version of same, they serve their purpose. Certainly nothing unusual in any of those.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I have a small collection of teapots on the kitchen window ledge. I wondered if they counted as unusual? They’re fairly brightly coloured, but – when you come down to it – they’re just teapots. In the dishwasher I have a little clean/dirty sign, to let people know the status of the current load – but we think that’s pretty normal. Perhaps the handmade mosaic trivet on my bench top? hmm…

Then I remembered the yellow Tonka Toy lurking on top of the kitchen cupboards. It’s one of the classic road graders, a remnant of my son’s childhood. When he moved out, he made a pile of his Lego, Meccano, toy cars and so forth and asked me to donate them to a good cause. Most went to charity shops or friend’s children without a second thought, but the grader was harder for me to part with. I had (and have) so many fond memories of the roads we built with it in the sandpit and the games that followed.

But what does one do with a discarded toy truck or, indeed, any discarded – yet beloved – toy? In this instance I perched a pair of discarded dinosaurs on it (a diplodocus and a triceratops, I’m told) and there they’ve remained ever since, our watchful kitchen deities. They keep track of everyone and everything that happens in this crazy central space in our home, where people congregate and culinary experiments happen.

My dino-truck combo definitely counted as an unusual kitchen item in most people’s books on the day and, try as they might, no-one could trump it. Since then I’ve looked more closely at people’s kitchens when I visit, keeping an eye out for their version of quirky. To my surprise, most kitchens actually do contain at least one oddity – but the dino-truck still rules 🙂OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The Book Pitch II

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A packed lecture theatre with air-conditioning set to Arctic+, three publishers and 15 opportunities to pitch – what could possibly go wrong? As it turns out, nothing and everything…

At the start the daylong publishing seminar, everyone interested in pitching their book was encouraged to put their name down on a list – and many did. The list was closed mid afternoon and the names were put into a large box as individual strips of paper. Once the actual pitch session started, 15 names were selected at random across the course of the hour. This meant we didn’t know if we’d been chosen until our name was called, at which point we had no more than three minutes to impress.

The best possible outcome was for one or more of the publishers to say something along the lines of ‘I’d like to hear more; send your manuscript to me’. Next best was to be asked questions that showed engagement and interest of some sort. Less good was if the comments showed either no interest or were really feedback to say that the book was an unlikely contender. Worst was to stand up and freeze – or simply choose to not pitch even though your name was drawn.

One person left before it even started and one other chose not to pitch. That left thirteen slots – and a room full of anxious hopefuls. As I listened to each of the pitches I was reminded of a number of things: speak clearly, don’t ramble, be prepared to answer whatever questions are thrown your way, don’t try to tell the whole story, and use humour if you can (but only if you can do it well!). Of the thirteen pitches I heard, four appeared to get the nod – I wasn’t one of them

By the time the second last name was to be called I’d accepted that it was unlikely that I’d be pitching. Then event MC read out my name – and the world got a bit fuzzy for a moment. I could claim that my chronic sinus infection and (very) annoying cough played a part in my less than stellar performance, but it was probably nerves more than anything else. I rushed through my piece and was left in a well of silence for a moment before anyone responded. My brain went into meltdown trying to figure out whether the silence was a good thing or a bad thing, so when the questions finally came my answers took a moment or two to formulate. The questions the publishers asked and the comments they made led me to understand that my pitch hadn’t informed the audience in the way that I’d intended. Although I spoke clearly, didn’t ramble and was more or less prepared for questions, I hadn’t provided enough detail – or perhaps the right sort of detail. Just as well I’d avoided humour… and possibly a pity I didn’t resort to cookies!

Actually, the most entertaining part of the afternoon was seeing the MC dip her hand into the box of names, recoil slightly and then discreetly call the sound engineer over to her table. After a quiet chat, he put his hand into the box and came out with… an enormous cockroach. By now my attention was riveted on the by-play and on the MC’s combination of tightly controlled horror and suppressed giggles. These only increased when the A/V guy looked around, casually placed the granddaddy of all cockroaches on his arm, then turned and walked quietly out of the auditorium. It was excruciatingly funny, particularly as it took place during one of the pitches and most of the audience and all of the publishers were focused on the speaker and appeared oblivious to the entire incident.

It may be time for me to get back into formal public speaking in order to hone the rusty skills and quell the butterflies. Meantime, I have an elevator pitch to work on, and author bio to update and a book proposal to submit.

A Five Year Sentence

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Just before New Year I was given a very attractive five year memory book. Essentially there are 365 pages, each page being designated for a particular day and each entry appearing five times on a page. The premise is that you just add the year and then write a line or two in the box – every day for f5 year memory bookive years. Because of the way the book is structured, you can then look back at any particular day and see what you had on your mind on that day over the course of the five years. It’s a way to keep track of both the everyday and the exceptional events in your life – but in brief, rather like a Twitter-log,  so that you don’t have to feel that it takes up a lot of your time or mental energy to keep it up to date.

The quandary I face is that I’ve actually kept a journal/diary and then a blog for many years and my entries tend not to be particularly concise. Whilst I do subscribe to Twitter and have learned to keep within the 140 characters that it dictates, my posts tend to be along the lines of passing thoughts or comments. I see the line-a-day diary entries as more personal and perhaps even meaningful, but have realised that I need to ‘Twitterise’ them so that they fit into the space provided in order for them to be succinct and interesting.

Thinking about all this brought to mind a Bernice Rubens book I read a while back. A Five Sentence is is about Miss Hawkins who, on retirement, is presented with a five year diary. For varioubernice rubens_a five year sentences and complex reasons, Miss Hawkins feels compelled to write in the diary – but has nothing to write about. So instead of writing about what she has done, she writes about what she will do – and then follows through on what she has written as though the entries are instructions, returning to tick the items off with a red crayon when she’s completed them. It’s a strange and disturbing little book, but a beautiful example of character development and clear, crisp prose. Sadly, I leant my copy to someone. Happily, I just found that it’s available as an Ebook and have downloaded it to reread.

Miss Hawkins and her five year diary, along with my attempts to Twitterise my thoughts for my five year diary, resulted in rumination as to the nature of compulsion and as to why people keep diaries/journals/blogs (of whatever sort). Some reading on the topic suggests that the reasons for doing so are probably as diverse as the people who keep them, ranging from tracking daily and/or special events to annotating holidays, from writing practise to therapy.

In my own case it started out as a means to discard or offload thoughts and feelings that I didn’t want to or couldn’t  share with anyone else. I was a moderately introverted teenager and had a range of complex issues to manage on my own, so I was basically writing to myself – and it worked very well. I was able to live in the moment and not hang onto angst or issues unduly and, as a result, to become somewhat pragmatic about life. This has served me well over the years.

More recently I’ve taken to writing for a wider audience, sharing my thoughts with others as a way of broadening the scope both of what I write and what I think about — and I enjoy it. This brings me back to day six of my line-a-day five-year-diary. I’ve managed five days of short entries and I think I’m getting the hang of it. I just hope that the three ladies in my life who ended up with one of these diaries at much the same time are busily writing in theirs each day too…