A MONTH OF WRITING

I am considering participating in NaNoWriMo next month. I make an attempt at this just about every year and every year, I reach a sticking place where no words come to me and I stare at the winking cursor on the screen. Type something. Type something. Type something. Then all the things I am not clouds over all the things I want to be. I give up and walk away from it. I am real good at giving up on the hard stuff. Maybe it is time to dig into the hard stuff. Maybe I should stop laughing in the face of people who tell me I should write a book.

I sat down this morning to work out an outline. The first thing I wrote is “What is the story I want to tell?” That is as far as I got. The first thing I thought when I asked myself that question was “Chris”. It always come back to telling the story of Chris. Except the story isn’t really about him. It always ends up being about me. Me me me. There is nothing extraordinary about our love story. We met in the cafe during the end of our freshman year. Books were mentioned and Chris said to me, almost mockingly “Oh, and what kind of books do you like to read?” I remember narrowing my eyes at him and thinking “I’ll show you!” Then I told him that I liked Dean Koontz, Michael Crichton. I said that I’ve read some John Grisham, but his story lines are all the same and that sometimes I like to read a trashy romance novel. The look on his face shifted from mockery to impressed. A few weeks later we went on our first ‘date’. At the end of it he said “I really like you.” Chris’s honesty completely won me over.

That was it. From that moment on we were just a unit.

There is not much of a story there. No, the story always comes later with Chris’s death. I don’t like that story. I don’t like telling a story of what it is like to not be a unit. The sadness. The depression. The day to day missing of him. That story sucks. It could be a story about discovering my own identity without Chris, but I am not sure I actually have discovered my own identity. I am still trying to figure out who I am, who I am not. I went into Target today without a list or a plan. I ended up dumping twenty dollars worth of face stuff into my basket. I bought a lip mask. A fucking lip mask. Am I now that person who buys ridiculous masks for specific parts of my face? My chin is so broken out right now. I look like I am trying to recreate my puberty. Actually, I don’t think my skin was this bad during puberty. And see what I’ve done here? I’ve completely veered off and have changed the subject.

I can’t sit down for a month of writing if I don’t even know what story I want to tell. This feels like giving up before even starting. I am leaning towards a collection of stories, one centered around food. Probably because I’m hungry, but I can see something brewing now in my brain. Not a recipe book exactly, but a series of essays centered around the table. Table Stories. It could be a mix of stories from my youth, my time with Chris and now. Little bittersweet stories of memories.

Thanks for letting me brainstorm. I now have fourteen things on my outline and I am starting to get a little excited about writing. That’s a feeling I haven’t had in a while.

QUEEN OF RODS, KNIGHT OF RODS, AND KNIGHT OF SWORDS

A story

0 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "A story"

This story is going to be told right to left instead of left to right because that is how this story came to me.

This is the story of Paul. Paul has lived whole life in a bubble of sorts. Born into wealth, Paul had never before had to work or wonder where money came from. Money was just there. Paul wanted a new shirt, Mummy just handed over her credit card. Paul decided he needed a brand new car, Daddy just wrote a check. Paul never questioned it and it didn’t even dawn on him to question it. Paul was the only child of two wealthy people who had also come from wealth. Daddy spent his days on the golf course. Those days were interrupted every third Thursday of every third month for a meeting with the board of directors who managed Daddy’s money. In these meetings, Daddy always nodded his head as if understanding what was being said and then ended the meeting with “That sounds just fine, boys. Keep doing what you’re doing.” Then he’d head out to the golf club. Mummy spent her days caring for her skin and looking for new wrinkles. Twice a year, she vacationed at a very exclusive spa in Fiji. She came home with tight skin and plump lips and a weird new juice diet that she would devote herself to until the next vacation. Paul lived a life of luxury without even knowing he was living a life of luxury. He just assumed his friends and truth be told, everyone else in the world lived a similar life of luxury.

Paul was clueless.

Then came the day that tragedy struck. Daddy suffered a massive coronary on the back nine of his exclusive golf course, killing him instantly. Of course this was devastating for Paul and Mummy, the worst part turned out to be that Daddy had not made any legal arrangements for his demise. Not only was there no will, but the board of directors in charge of the money had mis-handled that money. There was embezzlement and fraud and massive debt. Mummy and Paul were left destitute. Paul stood in the center of the massive entry way to their massive mansion and dumbly watched as movers carted off priceless works of art and antiques while Mummy stared in her mirror, crying and swallowing pills. Paul found her the next morning crumpled over her dressing table, her lifeless eyes still gazing at the mirror. Paul was not only destitute, but now he was an orphan. He buried Mummy next to Daddy on a rainy Wednesday. There was no one in attendance other than himself and Rosa, their cook.

Rosa had been the cook since before Paul was born. She had been the one he’d run to whenever he had a skinned knee or a splinter or hurt feelings and Rosa always greeted Paul with a warm hug and some sort of treat. Rosa treated Paul like her very own son. She scolded him when he needed scolding, made sure he did his homework and ate his vegetables. She nursed him when he was sick and handed out hugs with abandoned. Paul assumed that everyone had a Mummy who handed out credit cards, but paid little attention and a Rosa who handed out affection and always wanted to know how their day was going, who generally cared about the math test or the cricket match. Rosa patted Paul’s arm as they huddled together under the umbrella. She knew the her Paul was not prepared for the life ahead. He had never had to earn anything for himself, had never had do anything for himself. They watched as the cemetery workers began to fill in the grave. Rosa turned to Paul and said “You will come home with me. It will not be easy. You will have to share a room with my sister’s boy and you will have to get a job and earn your own money. But I will help you and teach you. You have a good heart Mister Paul. It will be a good foundation for your new life.”

Paul considered Rosa’s words and having no other thoughts of his own, agreed to live with Rosa and share a room with her sister’s boy.

THE TAKEAWAY

Detroit

"Detroit"

Every time I've gone to a BlogHer conference, I've come home fired up and ready to make major changes to the blog and write write write and take more pictures, better pictures and to speak out more against injustice in this world and raise more money for charities. I come back ready to change the world with my blog or I have at least gained some new techie knowledge to help me make my blog better for changing the world. This time? Not so much. Or I've just gotten way more mellow with age. This is not to say that I gained nothing from attending the conference or that I wouldn't recommend attending the conference. If you are new to blogging, this conference has invaluable tools and information for all things social media. Not to mention it is a great way to meet other women who have shared interests and build a following. I've gone from kind of wanting a following to not really caring if I have a following. It's not the reason I blog. I was talking to a woman at the conference and she asked me how long I've been blogging and I was shocked to realize that I have been blogging at Elephant Soap for almost fifteen years. I might have five more readers now then I did in those early years.

I attended a workshop on mobile photo editing thinking that I would learn about some new camera apps. I did not discover any new app that I didn't already have on my phone, but I was inspired to go back to a couple of those apps and give them another try. Snapseed and VSCOcam are two photo apps that I have on my phone that I never use. I think I tried using them once or twice, but then got lazy and didn't want to really spend time learning how to use them. I discovered an editing tool in Snapseed that I had been looking for but not finding in my other camera apps. I had shoved this app over into an unused section of photo apps on my phone. It's now been moved up. VSCOcam has inspired me to rethink my 365 day project. My Instagram feed is messy and random and I love it, but I'd like my 365 things that make me happy pictures to stand out. I want a cohesive artistic flow to them and I want them all in one place. VSCOcam is turning out to be that place. And because I'm working on having a cohesive artistic flow of images, it is making me more mindful of how and what I photograph for a happiness project. This is something I needed because my 365 Days of Happiness project had grown a little stale. There were too many days when I reached the end of the day and said "Oh crap! I haven't taken a 365 day picture yet!" and so I would scramble and just shoot something. I needed a reminder to be a more mindful photographer.

The other thing I sat in on at the conference was on storytelling behind the hashtags. I'm not good at hashtags. I often forget them or type them out wrong. I know they can be powerful tools for spreading the word. I thought I was sitting in on a discussion of how to use hashtags but instead ended up listening to stories that have developed from #YouOKSis, #KnowMe, and #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen. These were stories that I needed to hear. They made me realize that I need to be paying better attention to my surroundings and speaking up when I see something that doesn't seem quite right. I need to not be afraid to say something, which inspired my own hashtag #SaySomething. I've also been pondering a way to do cool science workshops in the inner city schools here. I want to show kids the career possibilities that are available in the science industry. ALL Kids. Not just the white ones. 

So, I didn't come home on fire with ideas, but I came home with some good ideas. I came home with tangible ideas. These are things that are not beyond the realm of possibility or me just thinking up super grand ways to make the world a better place. Maybe I've finally fully grasped that I cannot change the world by trying to actually change the world. Making a difference starts small and right in my own backyard or my own neighborhood. I'm going to focus more on the smaller side of change. These are the things I took from BlogHer '15.