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found a little piece of heaven

I’m sure I’ve confessed my love of journals here. Utilitarian canvas-covered sketchbooks and beautifully embossed covers with sewn-in creamy pages make me want to write brilliant things in them.

Then I get clammy hands and a terrible case of writer’s anxiety when I fear I won’t be brilliant…just…mediocre, and I don’t want to ruin the beautiful pristine pages with my ramblings. Because of this silly notion, I’ve amassed a stack of lovely (and some utilitarian) journals, sitting pretty and empty on my book shelf, longing to fulfill their purpose and house all kinds of thoughts.

Big thoughts. Small thoughts. Complicated and incomplete thoughts. Stream of consciousness and careful thoughts.

And yes, every once in a while, maybe something brilliant.

Something changed a couple of years ago and I started writing in these beautiful books. I didn’t think it would happen, but I’ve filled them all. I just opened the last empty one and filled the first page. Heaven.

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set aside some time to create

I was looking for some inspiring stuff for something else…naturally. Isn’t that the way we find new things? Anyway, I ran across this short video on creativity, and it made me think about the way I approach creativity — mostly writing, whether it’s jotting off a poem or trying to get a scene just right for a story.

In either case (and in other cases, too) — I do a lot of writing at work. Whatever the case, I found that a couple of things need to be present for me to get some creative work done. First, I need to have some time set aside, and it needs to be time dedicated to me — no interrruptions, and I need an open space without clutter and distractions. When I was a little kid, I used to be able to tune out the entire world…it’s a little harder now that I’m trying to run the world, doncha know.

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let’s talk about toothpaste

Toothpaste has really gotten under my skin lately. I mean, I’ve actually had a little bit of aggression as I face down my morning ablutions with this uncooperative and sinister part of my personal hygiene routine.

I’m used to this old-school aluminum tube that you squeeze from the bottom up. Okay, let me take that back. I squeeze it from the middle until it becomes a kind of lumpy uneven mess. Then I wake up in an OCD mood and decide that is the day I must squeeze from the bottom and get every last drop of Crest or Colgate or Superman bubble-gum flavored atrocity (I have little nephews).

That works for a while, and then, I get to what I think is the end of the toothpaste and that last inch seems to last for three years! Well, perhaps I may have a little problem with hyperbole…but it lasts for a really really long time.

So I switched to a different approach and bought this nifty little contraption which I believed would be the solution:

It wasn’t. Oh sure, it has a nice neat appearance, and sits up straight all important-like. But I can’t tell how much toothpaste is in there. I guess air squeezes out the toothpaste, so there’s no collapsing of the container. After a week, it weighs the same. Every time I brush my teeth I have this anxious moment where I wonder if this could be the last time. If next time I won’t have any toothpaste left because this insidious design is obviously a master plan to get me to purchase multiple bottles and keep them stored away. No! I will not be manipulated like that.

And anyway, those squirreled away tubes of toothpaste are in case of the zombie apocalypse and I won’t break into that stash.

So it finally happened and my worst case scenario became a reality. This morning I squeezed out the last bit of toothpaste in a rather unceremonious burp that splattered the paste onto my toothbrush and my shirt. Good riddance weird and unfriendly toothpaste container thingie.

Hello stash of half-used toothpaste left behind by college kids, visiting nieces and nephews, and numerous trips requiring travel-size tubes.

Pray for me.

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