Actually I’m totally not. If I was, I would have known that I was going to miss posting yesterday and would have anticipated such things, ensuring that I posted a thing, making this longwinded intro superfluous.

However, I’m here now and find myself caught a bit. It’s day three(ish) of the 30 day writing challenge I signed up to do approximately 37 days ago. I know, I’m so fucking organized. Sincerely, anything that takes a backseat to my schoolyness right now is okay with me. Do I dream of being both writer and mechanic? Fuck yeah, amongst other things (surfer, barefoot, silly, pie baking, festival pathway lighter, caravan builder, world traveller, sailor…yeah…it’s kinda endless) that will shift and become more or less important depending on the moment. This moment? School is the most important thing. Which is why crazy self sabotage brain has been sending me story ideas like there’s no tomorrow. I’m serious, I just had an idea for a short story that involves no tomorrow while typing that. And they all have such good reasons for wanting to be written! But none of those reasons benefit my ability to learn about braking, suspension, hydraulics and all the other fun stuff I’m trying to squish into my brain right now.

I don’t know if this applies for anyone else. Sometimes I start a post, a poem, a thing. For some reason, I have to walk away from it. An appointment, a distraction, perhaps I’m getting to close to something that scares me. I can tell when I’m getting into it, because if I’m on my laptop, I’ll open a browser window and start looking at something else. I can pull myself back most of the time but if I let it go for too long, typically I can’t resurrect it. I’ll delete whatever I’m working on, or I’ll save it and say (never out loud, that infers accountability) that I’ll come back to it.

I never do.
Even if the memory of it pops up, my brain has decided that we’re too different from the person who started that story/post/poem/love letter to Tom Hiddleston/list of sexual requests for Michael Fassbender/whatever.

Or, to save time, I could combine the love/lust letters, engage both of them to be my paramours and just be the queen of lusciously erotic efficiency. Damn, I have some great ideas.

What was I talking about?
AH yes, the followthrough.  Honestly, I’m not going to get very down on myself if I don’t post here everyday. Because I have been writing every day, much to the detriment of my mechanics education. Though, I’m following through on that too, not to worry. Perhaps not to the extent I could be, but I’ve cleared the 2 month honeymoon and so now my brain is suggesting that there are better things we could be doing with our time. However, knowing myself as I do, if I dropped out of school with the intention of being a full time writer, would I write every day?

HA! FUCK NO!

I would find something to distract myself from that. It’s what I do. But the point of all this rambly-bamblyness isn’t to cast light on those things lacking in myself, such as focus.  It’s more to acknowledge that I’m learning myself well enough to recognize what’s happening, in real time. Which doesn’t make me psychic, but what is psychic ability anyhow? Seriously, I don’t actually know. Hang on, Imma google.
A person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses. Thanks wikipedia! That leaves it pretty broad. It could be argued that we are all to some extent psychic, working out the information we hide from our own selves through what’s taught or construed as “normal” in an effort to be more balanced, to evolve and adapt and find those parts of ourselves that encompass a healthier, saner truth.

Why do I keep harping on the psychic thing? Because the day three challenge was to write a short story as if I were psychic and able to read the thoughts of those around me. A character study of the inner workings of the people around me.

Here’s the truth of it. It’s not that I don’t care about the inner workings of those around me. It’s just that I have enough trouble understanding my own motivations and perspective while on my meandering course through this life of mine. Would I better comprehend my tendencies and proclivities if I had a greater sense of what is going on with the humans around me? Perhaps.

Ultimately, the only person I can speak for is myself. Every character in every story I write is, to some extent, me. I can imagine how it feels to be raised a young boy in southern california during the depression, a middle aged woman who decides to leave her husband of 40 years because it’s something she needs to do, an apple who grows and thrives under sun and rain all season to find itself at home in a pie come september, an alien who discovers that everything their society believed about extra-terrestrials is wrong. But it’s always going to be me who writes it, me who sparks life into those characters. That doesn’t mean that I don’t hope I will create something that other people can see themselves in, something that resonates to such an extent that it brings them to tears, or laughter, moments of “I thought I was the only one!” We are a collective of beings sharing space on a tiny rock in space, after all. It’s good to share.

I feel like I’ve lost the plot of this one. But does there always need to be a cohesive narrative for clarity to be apparent? I suppose the point of this challenge is to write every day, the content doesn’t matter as much as the intent. And so my intention to follow through, both on writing and school (yeah..school should probably be first…) is manifesting itself as a finish what you start kinda thing. I’ve started school, I’ll finish it. Kick some ass, chew some gum, learn some stuff. I’ve started the 30 days challenge and I’ll see it to the end. The posts might not always follow the prompt to the letter and they might not be amazing stop the presses quality every time but the words will be spoken..written..typed..whatever.

And the stories that are filling my head? I’ll do my best to leave breadcrumbs back to them when I have the time. But for now, my focus should be on finishing the ones I’ve already started. And so I’ll do that.
If I can manage 1500 words a day? I’ll be stoked.
If I can write and/or post every day for the next 27? And perhaps most of the ones after that? Huzzah! That’s grand.
If I can learn all I can about mechanics and rock out with my engine block out ( then remember how to put it back in so that it runs better than before, of course.) and end up doing work that makes me mentally and physically strong while enabling surf trips and delightful travel adventure shenanigans?

Well, honestly, there’s no if about that last one. I’m not saying I can predict the future, but I’m pretty sure I got this.