I’ve told you about seed beds before. I have a bookcase full of seedbeds— books and stories and aphorisms— that I return to again and again. Right now I’m tidying myself into nowhere: can’t find anything I just put in neat place. I had several bulging folders labelled Blogs and I can’t find them. I was planning to whiz through them and give you a list to think about or dismiss as you wish. But now I can’t find them. I do have some stray folders: Techie Ideas, Seed Beds/Notes/Ideas/ Cash Crop Ideas, oh, and books. If I bought all the books in that folder I’d have to move, not for lack of space but for lack of money.
It must have occurred to you as it has to me, that I was never going to find the time for any of all this. What was I thinking? I never dallied with immortality., but i thought forever was a long time coming.
Not any more.
So I’ll give you a list and close a few folders. Perhaps that will make me feel better.
WILL POWER :
*a muscle one could exercise and strengthen OR
*a limited supply, too easily depleted.
*deadlines help (self-imposed?) will power.
I learned a new word: akratic from the noun akrasia, noun (chiefly Philosophy) the state of mind in which someone acts against their better judgement through weakness of will. DERIVATIVES akratic adjective ORIGIN early 19th cent.: from Greek, from a- ‘without’ + kratos ‘power, strength’. The term is used especially with reference to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.
I just lost one (all the writing disappeared) with a great example which I researched but won’t repeat.The idea is good and has been used a lot: a sub-genre of memoir or journal: setting a task for a year and writing about it it—in a blog. I can think of quite a few…
Wild by Cheryl Strayed ; Eat, Pray, Love or whatever the order is, by Elizabeth Gilbert. and more….
My favourite is P.D.James’s autobiography, told in a diary format, beginning on her birthdate and going through the ensuing year, not necessarily in that year. “On this day in such-an-such a year,”..she’ll write and recall a significant event in her life that happened on that date. Because of her and her book (Time To Be In Earnest), I went on the QEII when she was a guest lecturer to get her autograph and to give her a copy of my book about diaries, (Reading Between The Lines).
I could go on and on but it’s late and I have a headache. Not blog material.