Willa's Journal - Heart on sleeve

~~Heart on sleeve~~

Monday, November 25, 1996, 10:00 p.m.

Since we didn't go out to dinner to celebrate my birthday last night, I met Bob at Chili's for an early dinner tonight after work. Then he went over to his parents' house to say goodbye to his grandmother, who's going back home tomorrow, and I went to the grocery store. When I got home I found another birthday present--a box from my friend Terri with a set of sun, moon and stars rubber stamps and a candle. And a card full of confetti! It was an wonderful surprise.

I waited until too late to write tonight, and I'm sort of stuck for something to say. Barb sent me the URL of an interview with Scott Adams--Dilbert Nude--who is, of course, an incredible success story, and he makes a good point about creativity:

The morning is when I can do my creative work; can't really do it any other time. I never schedule meetings or phone calls for the morning. The average person starts to do clerical stuff first thing in the morning, and then can't understand it when they can't do creative work later in the day. They think they're not creative. It's just they haven't tried to be creative at the right time of day.

I find it really hard to be creative after I've been up for fifteen hours (like now), but it's equally hard for me to write early in the morning (I've tried that, too). The problem is that I have to work for a living. I've discovered that my peak time seems to be around 10:00 a.m., but unfortunately I'm at work then, writing for someone else.

So I picked up Bonnie Goldberg's "Room to Write" and opened it to see what inspiration I could find. It opened to a page about postcards. I love postcards, both sending and receiving them. I like the pictures on the front, and the fact that someone picked out that picture specifically for you. I like the limited space on the back for writing--small enough that just a few words can fill it if you don't have much to say, but large enough that you can fit in a lot of information if you write small.

Postcards are also interesting because they're right "out there"--heart on sleeve, so to speak. It's an interesting exercise to write a postcard to someone, to express what's in your heart while being oblique enough that you don't mind it being read by anyone who picks it up.

When I go to antique stores I always browse through the boxes of postcards. I don't buy them, because there doesn't seem to be much point unless I'm going to start collecting them, and I have enough collections as it is. But it's intriguing to me to pick up a card that someone sent to their mother or aunt or brother 50 years ago. They pretty much say the same things we say today: "The weather's nice, we had a good time today, we miss you and wish you could have come along."

I send postcards all the time, not just on vacation. I sent a bunch today, in fact, to all my sisters-in-law on Bob's side of the family. We always draw names at Thanksgiving for Christmas gifts, but no one ever remembers to do it until half the family has already gone home. And since I'm the organized (read "obsessive") one, I always make the list of who got what name so that when they forget, they can call me. So I sent postcards to everyone telling them who to buy Christmas presents for. Last year I had found some Christmas postcards on clearance and saved them for just that purpose. Aren't I organized?

On the heels of my "People Chase" award comes this one: "Get a Life - Home of the Socially Challenged Site of the Day."

Previous Entry | Next Entry