OODLs (Observations on Daily Life)

The last few days of 2019 have been unsettling. Not because of the state of the world - though that is cause enough to feel unsettled - but because for the first time in my adult life, I am entering a new year - a new DECADE! - without: Resolutions Goals Plans A theme A word for the year Expectations 527 days ago, I started a daily meditation practice. I’ll probably rhapsodize about that in future entries. For now, suffice it to say I have decided to take mindfulness to the next level and enter a new year without any of the things I thought brought order to my life, but instead just caused undue stress. This decision has, of course, stressed me out. Don’t misunderstand: I still have daily successful actions - like my meditation practice - I will continue to complete. But I am letting go of any desired outcomes for these successful actions. Instead, I will strive to simply be. We’ll see how this goes. Personally, I’ll be surprised if I make it to mid-January. ...

My name is Billie Anne, and it’s been 10 years and 29 days since my last blog post on this platform. If I’m being completely honest, I actually forgot about OODLs for...well, years. I remembered it quite by accident as I was contemplating starting a Facebook page for my random thoughts. Thoughts of a Facebook page morphed into thoughts of starting a blog, which then morphed into the memory of a blog I had abandoned quite unceremoniously “a few years ago.” My, how time does fly. I thought about scrapping OODLs and starting over.  But I still like the name, and reviving what I’ve already started is so much easier than starting again from scratch. And so, here I go again.

November is of the past, as is NaNoWriMo. Gone is my excuse to ignore my blog because I need the extra time to bolster my word count. I did it. I wrote 50,000 words in fewer than 30 days. My final word count was around 54,000. Most of those words are actually correctly spelled and strung together in such a way that I have a good start on a story. Notice that I don't claim to have written a complete novel; in fact, at 54,000 words I am only about halfway through my tale. Now it's December, and I have to decide if I want to continue adding to that 54,000 words. A part of me (and more than a few books written about writing) says that I should keep on truckin'; after all, I just spent thirty days working on this thing. But there's another part of me that is itching to move on to smaller, greener pastures. In the process of working on a "novel," my brain pinged on some pretty good short story ideas (and more than a few blog topics.) And - let's face it...

It's day 11 of NaNoWriMo, and I've written just over 26,000 words of my novel. 25,500 of them will be deleted in the rewrite. And yet, I don't consider this a waste of time. There could be hope for me yet.

Ian walked into my office this afternoon and lamented, "I wish there were more hours in the day. There's not enough time for me to do everything I have to do and still be able to do the things I want to do!" He's ten years old. While we are busier than I would like to be, I don't think our family has a particularly fast-paced life. True, Ian dances three evenings a week, but that's his only extracurricular activity. He is homeschooled, so - while we do follow a lesson plan - he hasn't been pigeonholed into an academic schedule that is too difficult for him. Consequently, he rarely has homework. I work full time, but two days a week I work from home. Mike is a stay-at-home dad/microfarmer. Lily spends her days learning her ABCs and watching old episodes of Blue's Clues. Overall, I would say that we are much more relaxed than the typical American family. And yet, at ten years old, Ian is already craving the mythical 25th hour. I know how he feels...

Every word uttered in our house is recorded. Our conversations are stored in a comprehensive database for later review and utilization. No, I do not think the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, or IRS has bugged our house or tapped our phone line. I am not a conspiracy theorist. I am the mother of a 2-year-old. Sitcoms, movies, and even commercials are rife with cherubic children creating awkward situations for their parents by revealing intimate family secrets. Remember the commercial in which a little girl in an elevator regales strangers with the details of the Disney cruise she enjoyed with her parents the previous year? The one that culminates with her telling one of the other elevator passengers that her mother refers to her baby brother as "our little souvenir?" I'm pretty sure that commercial was scripted by a mom. For now at least, Lily doesn't tell embarrassing stories about our family. She does, however, repeat everything she hears us say. Every...

A few months ago, I attempted to read The Atlantis Blueprint , by Colin Wilson and Rand Flem-Ath. I say "attempted" because it took me four weeks to get 2/3 of the way through the book. My failure to complete the book rests squarely on my shoulders: sadly, I usually only have about a half-hour before going to bed each night to devote to reading, and the material covered in The Atlantis Blueprint requires much more attention than I was able - or willing - to give it. In other words, I was looking for a mindless read, and when I didn't get it I gave up and returned the book to the library. While much of what is covered in the book is speculative science and therefore does not pertain to this blog, one sentence made it into my "Random Ideas" (now my "Observations on Daily Life") file: "There are probably millions of human beings in the world today whose intelligence is just as great as the famous scientists, artists and intellectuals in our histo...