Expressing Thoughts

If you can recall a post I had written last June (right HERE, if you need a refresher), I was involved in my church’s Writing & Content team for the summer. Toward the end of summer, there was a writing session where only three of us could make it for that week. The leader, me, and another guy.

At some point, we were discussing about what kind of topics we were thinking about writing. In a half-joking matter, the non-leader guy – let’s call him Jay – expressed his frustration at how he had all these good ideas when he’s talking to other people about them, but when he sits down to write these ideas, he doesn’t remember them anymore.

“It’s almost like I need to carry a voice recorder with me,” Jay said. “Just so I don’t keep losing all my ideas.”

“It sounds like you’re an extroverted* thinker,” I remarked. He gave me a blank look, so I continued on. “I’m the same way. I have to write things down or say them aloud in order to process my thoughts. I probably look like a crazy person when I’m mumbling to myself, but it works.”

I don’t know if Jay ever employed any tactics to help him out since then – he did state that he lives alone in his apartment, so at least no one can judge him if he talks out loud to himself – but I’ve been thinking about this exchange lately.

Like I mentioned in my last blog post, I’ve been actively writing for the past nine days. (Well, I’m not counting today. I still plan on writing later tonight. This post technically doesn’t count.) My original plan was to begin my super short writing goal on Feb 18, but it didn’t quite happen that day. False start.

But since last Tuesday, I’ve been making an effort to write a little bit each day. The idea is to write at least an hour, but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. Sometimes it’s only 30-45 minutes. Last Saturday I wrote for almost two hours. It all depends on how much time I have allotted myself in the evening and whether I’m in a mood to write more.

Surprisingly, none of them are fiction pieces. I’m honestly not quite sure what to call them. Personal essays? Some of them are memories that I’m writing about; others are just something interesting that had happened in my day, and I felt compelled to basically record it. Not like I live a very exciting life in the first place.

But the fascinating tidbit about them is, in all of their closing paragraphs, I seem to circle around the same two or three topics. Clearly there are some concerns that my brain feels important enough to keep calling attention to. It’s processing and reevaluating.

The big question is: can I find ways to resolve these particular issues/worries?

Either way, the workings of the mind can be cool and weird at the same time.





*If you research any sort of Myers-Briggs test, they will give you a completely different definition of what makes a person an extroverted or introverted thinker. (And that’s only if your dominant trait is Thinking rather than Feeling.) I wish I could remember and locate the article I had read long ago, but basically, the “extroverted thinking” I’m referring to is when you do your best thinking by having a conversation – whether with someone else or pretending that you are. So in a sense, you seek out people to bounce ideas off of. The “introverted thinker” is fine with just sitting there and sifting through the thoughts in their heads.

A Jumble of Randomness (aka: Snippets of My Life)

I struggled with writer’s block as I tried to come up with an idea for my mid-month blog post. I brainstormed some things that I either experienced or events that had occurred during these past two weeks, and honestly, I feel like my mind was all over the place. I’ll attempt to create some sort of order, but here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately:

1.) Still decluttering

That’s right – the fun hasn’t stopped since last month. I’ve been heavily attacking all the contents hidden away in the kitchen. My first business was the deep pantry. Bought two adjustable shelves to stack spices on one shelf, which worked beautifully. This way, you can now physically see everything instead of trying to locate a particular spice on either the plastic turntable or the overflow surrounding the turntable.

It took a little while to come up with an idea on how I wanted to organize the two shelves below the spices, but after a trip to my local At Home store, I got it figured out. Three sets of two clear bins now contain all sorts of dry good items on one shelf. As for the other, I got two wire shelves to place against the wall. All three shelves now also have a small light attached to the wall off to the side to illuminate them, because the kitchen light does a poor job of lighting the pantry in the evenings.

Next, I started thinning out the cabinet where we keep all the water bottles and casual dishes. Stacked all the water bottles into neat vertical lines. The following day, I went after the mugs.

My family has a mug-collecting problem. As in, they could be found in five different locations throughout the kitchen. Which is ridiculous. They were even starting to stack in front of drinking glasses. And the sad part is, only my Dad and brother uses them.

So I pulled out every single mug I found hidden away.

There are a total of 104 mugs.

Or should I say, there were that many mugs. I managed to convince my Dad to part with 40 mugs, which will eventually be donated. Now all the mugs can be found in only three different locations. (Two of which are on two shelves in the same cabinet.) It’s a start.

The next day, I tackled all the vases and fancy glasses. Everything we kept is now in straight orderly lines instead of cluttered together.

After all this, the kitchen still isn’t completely decluttered, but it’s definitely improving. Wish I could put my skills of organizing on my resume, haha.

Oh! And I’ve also been cleaning out my bathroom drawers. Bought drawer organizers and assigned different places for particular items. I have all this extra space since my sister moved out back in December, so I might as well take advantage of it.

2.) Snow

I’m tired of snow. I spent Monday-Wednesday shoveling/snow blowing by myself. I even woke up yesterday morning with sore arms and shoulders.

On Tuesday, the snow was heavy with rain from earlier in the morning. Which made my shoveling much more difficult. I didn’t even try the snow blower, because I was afraid it might ruin the blower’s mechanics in some way.

Fifty minutes into shoveling, I only managed to clear a third of my driveway. Across the street, a truck pulled into the driveway of my neighbor’s house and plowed through their snow. I narrowed my eyes at the company truck. Show off, I thought.

Once the majority of the driveway was cleared within minutes, the man got out of his truck and started his snow blower. I stopped shoveling and watched him, wondering if it’d actually work for him.

He plowed through the sidewalk and pathway leading up to the house with ease.

Which was good news for me, because it now meant that I shouldn’t have a problem with my snow blower. But it also meant I labored for almost an hour when I could have just used the snow blower in the first place.

So once the man moved to a house two over to work on clearing their snow, I reached for my snow blower. I didn’t want to make it obvious that I only thought to use my snow blower because of him. Which isn’t completely true – I was just afraid of breaking things, knowing my luck. Stubborn pride of mine.

3.) Books

I finished reading THUNDERHEAD by Neal Shusterman on Feb 9. Ah, that cliffhanger ending! I change my mind about what I said in my last post about not having any writing influences – when it comes to anything third-person omniscient, I think of Shusterman. It still baffles me that his name isn’t as well known. (After all, he’s written so many books over the years.) At least THUNDERHEAD’s previous book, SCYTHE, earned him a Printz Honor.

So now I’m onto my fourth book of the year: SKY IN THE DEEP by Adrienne Young. I’m not that far into it, so I can’t say too much about it yet. It is Young’s debut, and it’s about a Viking-like society – which had me sold. I have surprisingly never read a fictional book about Vikings, so I’m hoping Young doesn’t let me down.

4.) Writing

I haven’t done any sort of creative writing since NaNoWriMo ended. I spent my December recuperating my sanity and enjoying the holidays. During the month of January and part of February, I’ve definitely been in my Season of Absorbing. I’ve been eating up so many stories in either book or TV show form. I even went back and reread three short stories of mine. Two were old stories, though, so the writing made me cringe a little. But still.

I think my “absorbing” is drawing to end, though. My fingers are itching to do some writing. I have even decided, starting on Feb 18, to write every day for the rest of the month. I don’t care what I’m sitting down and writing – just as long as I’m typing away. For some reason, I’ve been pondering a lot about non-fiction pieces, which is a bit weird for me. Either way, I think I’m aiming for an hour a day. We’ll see come Monday.