Abandoned

I used to judge abandoned blogs. Why start something and just leave it hanging? Why publicly reveal you are a quitter? Why leave up something that is dead? These questions betray the immaturity of my thinking. Is something not worth doing if you cannot do it forever? No, that's absurd. Life has many phases that flow from one to the next, and very few are chapters that have a definitive end. 99.9% of blogs are probably currently inactive. So what? A blog is just one form of self expression and communication. Perhaps those authors have kept writing elsewhere, or perhaps they have stopped writing and pursued other efforts. Wish them well, wish them satisfying and life-giving endeavors.

How many more things will I write (or think) that I will change my mind on? If I have grown, and learned, should I not be kind to my past self and appreciate that I can change? I have always worried that if I spoke my mind I would regret that I had because one day I may change my outlook. As if I were afraid of growth. But that would actually be a bad thing, to never change or never admit you were wrong, and there is power in doing that publicly. Popular opinion can be too unforgiving and we would benefit from encouraging and forgiving those willing to admit when they are wrong. Why would I stifle my own free practice of this belief yet want it desperately for others?

And yet I have not grown much because I have stopped myself from saying anything lest I should be called out on it. I need to find the courage to say if I am wrong, I can grow, and if I am not then I need to speak truth. I need to stop being ashamed of truth. And also, stop worrying about a fictional hypothetical theoretical unlikely time when I may be highly criticized because I am highly visible. I should be so lucky! Life has certainly shown that in all but the rarest of cases, fame is hard to come by. An audience must be won, and I am not the type to do it by any means I find ignoble. If I have earned it, I will have succeeded in speaking truth.

In hindsight, it is all the Resistance* doing its job so well, keeping me in the "safe" zone, protecting me from myself and others. I have not been being brave. I have not been acting clever. To call it what it is, I have been timid, I have given myself over to lethargy, and I have been too quick to chase easier thrills and leave the hard work behind. It doesn't kill me to journal. It is merely discipline about bedtime and discipline during times of upheaval, whether that be injury, pandemic, or malaise. I am enabling an amateur when I'm long past due to go pro.

(*See The War of Art by Steven Pressfield)

Letters From Santa (a seasonally appropriate flash fiction story) by Rachel Dull

At half past 11, I snuck downstairs to filch the enormous sugar cookie with green frosting that my baby sister, Isabelle, had left out for Santa Claus. I had already poured myself a glass of fresh milk before heading into the living room, which was lit by the cozy Christmas tree lights we had left on so Santa could navigate the floor plan when he arrived. I paused in front of the twinkling beacon, holding the magic of Christmas in its ornament-laden boughs. It felt so peaceful in the tree’s halo that I sighed with contentment as I reached for the plate on the side table by the chair. My fingers had just curled around the wreath cookie waiting for me these past 4 hours when a commotion caused me to dropped the stolen goods and jump back in fear as a man’s voice bellowed out “Ho! Ho! Ho!” and a mechanized Santa began to sway his hips and dance to “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”.

I hardly knew a sound had escaped my lips, but my younger brother, sitting across the room with a video recorder trained on my every move, described it as the whinny of a horse crossed with the wheeze of our elderly grandfather when he gets out of bed. “Gotcha!” Davey called. I came out of my trembling crouch and recognized the horrible Santa mannequin that our mother had purchased once at a garage sale, and every year insisted on putting out on our front porch to greet holiday visitors who came to call. My brother, in his comedic wisdom, had relocated the devil for the express purpose of catching me in the act of stealing Santa’s cookie and giving me a fright. “Just wait until I show Isabelle!” he cackled, skipping past me, and swiping the cookie before heading back to his room.

As the robotic Santa finished his dance and clicked off, I stood there staring at an empty-but-for-crumbs plate illuminated in the glow of the tree that had lured me into a false sense of security with its angelic topper and glittery tinsel. After Isabelle saw that video, not even the large box I put under the tree with her name on it would win back her love. I drank my milk and pondered for a moment, then pulled a charred bit of wood from the fireplace and tucked it into Davey’s stocking with the following note: “Davey, I know you ate my cookie. I can’t take your presents back now, but consider this bit of coal a warning for next year. I’ll be watching. —Santa.” And then I tucked a special note into Isabelle’s stocking that said, “Dear Isabelle, your brothers mean well, they just make bad choices sometimes. Keep on loving them, just like I do, and they will come around. Don’t give up hope! Especially on Logan. He’s a good brother. Love, Santa.” That’ll teach Davey to mess with Santa, I thought, mechanized or otherwise.

Rachel Dull, writer personality

For some time I have been planning to make a website to present a professional “Rachel Dull, writer personality” to the internet. At last, it is live. There you can find a list of my short story publications as well as another blog I am writing to keep interested persons informed of my publication and writing exploits. I’m still figuring out what the difference is between the two blogs, but I think it’s that The Merest Idea is for RB and LB to learn to work together and give them each a chance to exhibit, whereas the other blog will be more writing focused. I would not be surprised if in time I needed to merge these concepts because keeping one blog is hard enough, but for now the division seemed necessary to keep both unshackled from the limitations of the other (i.e. Left Brain asked me to). Also, I don’t know what I’m doing.

If you have enjoyed my writing here, I hope you will enjoy my writing about writing over there. And I’ll be sure to let you know when I start my next blog, which will probably be writing about writing about writing, because going meta is my defense mechanism.

Words: about the ones I can't find to explain myself well, and the ones I can't spell

I don't even feel like I can put into words. Not enough thoughts to compute—just a general feeling of being not good enough at things I've said, ideas I've expressed. I've tried to capture them before they were fully formed and I made a bad image. But I don't have time or wherewithal to properly form good thoughts before I have to speak them.

"Before we can get all the facts, we may be going to have to act." —They Might Be Giants

I am torn and pulled in different directions. My mind cannot settle on one idea long enough to do anything about it. Dart, flit, swoosh, and I'm off to a new idea. I will paint my nails. Write a letter. Eat a snack. Tweet. Write a blog post about how I never liked the illustrations accompanying Shel Silverstein poems. Write a blog post about words I can't spell, like "occasion". Reminisce (<-- not confident on that one either) about how when I wanted to thank accompanists in high school for playing piano for me, I always had to write "Thanks for playing piano for me" because I never, and still haven't, learned how to spell the word for the role they do. Don't write a blog post because no one cares about my quirky asides that are one sentence long and decidedly not worth an entire blog post. Write a blog post about how I always want to write blog posts to have an excuse to tell people my quirky asides. Don't write a blog post, just say my asides randomly to my spouse who is across the room and who will probably love me anyway, even if I say things completely out of context and annoy him by interrupting what he is reading. Is this a blog post? I can't post this—it's the pointless ramblings of a restless person who drank coffee 13 hours ago and wonders if the caffeine (<--that one I can spell, oddly) is just now kicking in. But what if it has comedic value? As soon as you ask that it doesn't. But what if other people sometimes feel the same way? But what if they don't and I look like an idiot who talks to herself?

I write for the case of "just in case": "Just in case I'm not alone on this." I write to make connections with people. I write because I want to say the "connections" thing better but I'm having trouble sentencing today.

All spellings checked and corrected before publication. (Thanks, red squiggly line!)

Bonus quirky aside: What's with cookbooks without pictures? I'm already trying to imagine what a recipe going to taste like and now you want me to imagine what it is going to look like, too?