Tuesday, January 1, 2013

The best-laid plans

at Two Writing Teachers!
Well, yesterday I was all excited to start out the year today with an insightful, reflective slice of life that would renew my resolve to connect with my slicing friends every week!  Then, as it so often does, life got in the way.

We woke up to a cable outage. No TV, no house phone, and NO INTERNET!

We called the cable company, who confirmed it was an outage they already knew about and were working on. "Well, I'm sure it won't be out very long," we said.

We read books. We waited until lunchtime.  It was still out.

Since we'd been thinking about going to see Rise of the Guardians today anyway since it's only playing in the afternoons now at our local theaters, we went.  "Surely the cable will be back when we get back from the movies!" we agreed.

The movie was great -- an imaginative, hopeful glimpse into a world I'd dreamed of as a child. I can't wait to read the book.  (Usually I hate seeing the movie first, but that's just how it happened with this one!)  When we got home, the cable was still out.

We read some more.  We played a Wii game. We started to feel disconnected to the world.  Weren't there tweets and Facebook posts and blog articles popping up every second?  And how was I going to write my blog post?  Besides, we were missing all the college football on TV!  "It has to be back on by the time we eat dinner," we assured ourselves.

We went to one of our favorite restaurants, one that has huge TVs that displayed the Rose Bowl in glorious HD all around us.  Upon arriving home... that's right, you knew it was coming... the cable was still out.

So we played another game on the Wii, and read some more books.  "I guess I'll just have to blog tomorrow," I sighed, when suddenly...

THE
CABLE
CAME
BACK ON!!!

So, hello everyone!  Happy 2013!  This may not be the post I'd expected to write, but I'll get around to that one eventually.  Really, this is a much better picture of how life really goes:

You don't suddenly have more time in the new year.  You don't suddenly have a brand-new, clean, perfect slate to start over.  Not really.  You have all the junk and clutter and craziness that you had last year, and perhaps more!  So really, this is probably the best way to start my blogging for 2013: feeling like I had to squeeze it in, unable to find that magical writing time, climbing over obstacles to get there, but doing it anyway.  Because that's how it's going to be all year: messy and imperfect and hard.

But I'm going to do it, just like I did tonight.

6 comments:

  1. Sounds like you had a fun day, actually, but I understand what you mean by feeling disconnected. So much of our life now is digitally connected. We must be missing out on something when the cable goes out.

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    1. It was a very fun day, Deb! :-) I felt ridiculous being rattled by the lack of Internet, but that didn't change the fact that I was! I will admit, I'm very much of a planner, much to the amusement of my mom and husband. (Dad is a planner too!) Although it's silly, the fact that I had planned to blog early in the day and then couldn't was very bothersome! Sometimes the best parts of life happen unexpectedly though, and we certainly had a lot of fun doing the things that the lack of cable "forced" us to do!

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  2. And you also managed to write a very fun post, Jennifer, just filling it with the very stuff we all love, at least I do, living by the seat of our pants I think that's called. It was great to hear all the 'things' that you did instead, & yet, we are all very connected anymore aren't we? My internet was out for 3 days when I moved, so I got along with just the IPhone. We are a little bit spoiled I think, & very lucky to have all we have. Happiest of new years to you & your husband!

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  3. I loved the rhythm of this piece- it kind of reminded me of THE DOORBELL RANG, an old picture book that I love. Maybe more, I loved the big truth at the end, "You don't suddenly have more time in the new year. You don't suddenly have a brand-new, clean, perfect slate to start over. Not really. You have all the junk and clutter and craziness that you had last year, and perhaps more!" So, so, so true. I need to relax and remember this!

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  4. Happy New Year Jennifer! What a day for you but it provided you with a great slice of life. Life is messy, but yet we manage to make it through each day. I look forward to reading more about your life this year.

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  5. Glad you were able to finally post - whew! :) it's crazy when you want and need to do something and you can't. You are so right - the new year will be just as messy and chaotic as last year, and we need to welcome that with a sense of humor! Happy new year!

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