Friday, May 30, 2014

in which I confess to nothing

I have three half-written posts in my drafts folder right now, and another one in my head. They sound fascinating in my head before I sit down to write them, but when I am actually in front of the keyboard, they disappear. I think I'm going through my midlife crisis, and as I say that, I think I remember telling you that before. HA. I just went and did a search and it was back in 2007. Apparently I'm having a seven-year midlife crisis.

Anyway. Every time I start working on a post, it turns into a whiny, navel-gazing bore-fest. Even the few I've posted in the last six weeks have had that screechy scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel feel. So I'm sparing you. I will tell you two things, though.

One is that I read Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, which is the mega-best-selling story of her trek along the Pacific Crest Trail back in the mid-90s. Her writing style sucked me right in. I couldn't put it down. But it's also pretty odd. I'm not sure I'd recommend it. It just wasn't very believable--not that I doubt that she's telling the truth (I have no way of knowing), but anybody who has tried to write non-fiction knows that just because something "really happened" doesn't mean it needs to go in your narrative. One small example: practically every man she met on the trail was handsome. Maybe they really were, but it makes her seem shallow and silly to say that every time a new man shows up.

Also, I find it difficult to relate to people who have had a lot of experience with heavy-duty drug use. It's just so far outside my experience that I can't understand it. Which probably makes me sound like the ultimate prude, but so be it. I want them to get over it and then feel bad about their experiences, then make the standard anti-drug lectures based on what they've learned, but it doesn't seem to happen that way. For some, it just seems to have been a necessary phase of their growing up.

Anyway. Reading it did seem to be just what I needed, though, because I'd picked up two or three fiction books in the week previous and hadn't been able to get absorbed in any of them. So I'm grateful to her for that, at least. Wild is very entertaining. Read at your own risk.

I have now started out two paragraphs of this post with the word "Anyway," and edited it out of another sentence. Which is probably about how I talk in real life, so now you know.

Anyway. (sorry, couldn't resist.) Here is the second thing: Yesterday was our 30th anniversary. Woot! You know he's a pretty special guy if he's put up with my nonsense for that long. Since we already took that trip back in March, we just went out to dinner last night, but it was pretty nice.

And speaking of time flying by, we're just a couple of days away from June. At the moment, I can't imagine that I will have anything else to tell you for quite awhile, but every time I think that, I come up with something new to post about, so who knows. Have a nice weekend.

4 comments:

  1. Happy Anniversary! (Slightly belated.)

    I'm reading two books at once, one upstairs and one down here. Both very different, and I'm enjoying each for its own sense of what the story is doing.

    The new Elizabeth Gilbert offering (it's fiction, but historical and so far: AWESOME) and the second of Phryne Fisher's tales of mystery.

    Also, you already know that I love whatever you talk about here, additional "anyways" or not.

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    1. Thank you, Julie! let me know how the Elizabeth Gilbert book turns out!

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  2. Happy Anniversary! I remember your wedding day.

    And I had almost the exact same reaction to "Wild".

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    1. Yeah, it was a strange book. And since we had our wedding pictures out the other night, I saw you in the pictures! We looked so young!

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