So is it cliche to turn to writing when you can't think of anything else to do? Not, that I don't have anything else to do. I do. I have 2 little girls, 2 1/2 and 1. I have a husband who just started a new job and I have a father and a "not-brother-in-law" (read: sister's fiance) trying to start up a family business of which I am 1/3 owner. Still, I found myself turning to Zynga games for 2 hours a day when the girls took a nap or when my husband was watching Law and Order or Ultimate Fighter at night. Apparently, I am not the only one affected by these mindless, albeit, addictive games. I was listening to the Bert Show this morning on Q100 in Atlanta and apparently 80 million people play Farmville. 80 million people growing cyber-crops. If I was judgemental I'd say "Damn, we're a lazy generation. Can you imagine the difference in the world if 80 million of us were growing REAL crops?" But I'm not judgemental. It's not like my house is immaculate, or the laundry's ever finished or my kids are doing something amazing like playing Beethoven at 2 or reciting the Gettysburg Address at 1 like all of those YouTube kids out there.
My friend Lisa called me out the other day. "You need to get a hobby. If I get one more Mafia Wars post on my FB wall from you, I'm hiding you. I mean it." Not gonna' lie. It hurt my feelings. And do I even need to say that it obviously hurt my feelings because I was embarrassed and feeling guilty about all of those mindless hours spent? So instead of being judgemental I decided that I was throwing in the towel on Mafia Wars and YoVille. I now have no more mindless activity filling up my down time and that time has turned into a void that I have to fill. And I need to fill it productivley. I just put my kids down for a nap and I sat here staring at my empty email box and my fully updated Facebook page and realized that I DO need a hobby. Except, the word "hobby" fills me with dread. It conjures visions of quilters and gardeners and bridge players that have at least 40 years on me. So I'm going to write instead. I didn't study creative writing at school. I was an International Business Major so forgive the punctuation mistakes. God only knows how a semicolon is supposed to be used properly, but I figure that's what editors are for, right? Don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm not taking writing seriously, but like so many, I've been told that I "shouldn't" or "can't" or "will never" succeed. But, if everyone that had ever been told that believed it... So here goes... I'm going to try and write here every day as practice and I'm also going to start working on my children's book and my novel that may be no good but at the end of the day I'd rather have a crappy novel to show as my life's work than a cyber farm full of regrets.
No comments:
Post a Comment