Bullet Journal Addiction

So I disappeared again. This time I fell in a rabbit hole. Deep in the hole. I fell and I couldn’t climb out. This time it’s a new addiction. I blame it on my Bullet Journal and all the bullet journal junkies out there.

It all started with one A5 Leuchttrum1917 journal. The journals multiplied. Everything from the Rhodia journal to some inexpensive notebooks from Michael’s piled up on the corner of my desk.

Then came the quest for the perfect pen. One that wouldn’t bleed through the paper. One that could write in any notebook without ghosting. One that writes with the smoothness of oil on a cabbage leaf. (Metaphors are my downfall). I spent so much money on fountain pens, cartridges and ink that I could’ve bought a Namiki… well maybe a Visconti. For now I’ll settle for my TWSBI and see if big brother is listening.

I’m living in a nightmare of stickers, washi tape, stencils, pencil boxes, dual point markers, rubber stamps, ink pads, dashboards, and pen holders. Every time I get near a store, especially a craft store with aisles catering to people like me, my car stalls right there in the space closest to the door. I can’t help it. I need just one more pen, one more sticker. I need to find the one thing that makes my Bullet Journal better than anybody else’s. I need to stop stalking Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube #bulletjournals that feed my habit.

I’ve been sneaking home before anyone else gets there, hiding my stash. But I got caught. I had to confess. I promised my husband that I would have a “no spend” March. But wait – it’s still February – does it count if I shop online today but delivery happens in March?

Purrsistence

img_0447
Are you sure you want to delete this file?

 

Update: In response to one of the comments left below, I began to feel guilty (maybe more like petrified) about using this picture of a print. In order to avoid the copyright police I did the best I could to find the artist – not a difficult task and it came with a bonus. Check out Art That Makes You Laugh but be forewarned –  you will laugh, be inspired and want to own one of his pieces. And just so you know, Jeff Leedy responded to my confession and says the picture can stay. 

What the heck happened this year? And the blog? Where did it go? I just realized the titles for my last three posts could tell a story. Three months ago I mentioned I wanted to write. Nine days later marijuana had arrived. Two months after that I looked at the news feed on Facebook and saw it was I Love to Write Day.

So here’s the story. I felt trumped. No amount of word tweaking, plot twisting, or new endings could turn my 90,000 word memoir into the Erma Bombeck kind of masterpiece I had imagined in my head. It was just not going to happen. In an angry moment I placed Trumpette (our neurotic cat) dangerously close to the delete key.

But, a miracle happened. Marijuana had arrived. Trumpette inhaled a hefty dose and the next thing I knew she was attacking fireflies at the patio door in the middle of a sunny day. Wait. I got that wrong. We don’t have fireflies in California. I guess it was night time and they were moths. It seems I was in a kind of fog, maybe a contact high? I found myself back at the keyboard. Magic happened. While Trumpette purred off the pot, I rewrote the entire book. In one night. It was done. I sent it off to the publisher. And then I quit writing until I-Love-To-Write-Day came.

Remember that Bullet Journal I had started a few months back? I began a new list:

  • Blog – maybe consider fiction
  • Send Trumpette to rehab
  • Find out why the publisher hasn’t contacted me
  • Revise – try again

 

 

Marijuana Has Arrived

Marijuana has arrived

Seven months ago there was another billboard on this corner. You might remember my Chase rant. Soon after my post, the offensive advertisement, “home ownership within reach in Oakland?,” was removed.

I see this corner every week when I take the 27th Street exit on my way to church. Each week the homeless camp spreads further out in all directions, new tents, more shopping carts, more hungry people, more debris. Does it make sense now to advertise that “Marijuana has arrived?” What’s next? Could we plant a different seed? Maybe just one mustard seed of hope?

I Wanted To Write

Dorothy Parker’s Mink Coat

I wanted

  • to write a book that would tear your insides apart with laughter, not heartbreak.
  • to write tiny bites of my life with enough humor to leave my readers with howling belly aches over exaggerated blimps and bleeps.
  • to write the best selling memoir full of wit and wisdom, one that would live on the nightstand of every parent on this earth who might need a quick dose of humor following a particularly harrowing day.
  • to write with a keen sense of humor to keep my readers turning the pages (or swiping their Kindles) to the very last word.
  • to write the takeaways that would lead to joyful resolution for all who read my words.

Meanwhile I have

  • written the necessary 90,000 words of a pitiful and shitty first draft (ala Anne Lamott), just to get over it.
  • highlighted the questionabull, deleted the distractabull, rewritten the sustainabull, and added the conceivabull.
  • hit the muddy middle and squirreled away at least sixty hours of mindless FaceBook gaming in the last thirty days.

The time has come

  • to send away the critics and bring in the clowns.
  • to let go of the past.
  • to write that final chapter.

If nothing else comes of this

  • I can say I wrote a book
  • My inner self will be sufficiently mended.
  • I can be a better person.
  • I still have a sense of humor.

BUT maybe one day I’ll sit at the Algonquin table in Dorothy Parker’s mink coat signing copies of my phenomenal book.