i'm going to be a blogger. i mean a real, live scheduled blogger. on a blog other than my own. this could get interesting, since i generally only write as passion or fancy strikes (which, as you followers know, can be rare). but now, in addition to a schedule, i have guidlines to follow - they have standards, people, a statement of purpose!
help.
i asked for a deadline because i work best under pressure. pressure begat writer's block (can you have that when you're not really a writer?), which begat stress, which begat more blockage. so of course i procrastinated and turned to gchat:
10:33 pm
me:
looking back through my posts, i think the good ones are either really randomly funny (like putting pantyliners in my armpits or chickpeas falling down my shirt) or really personal
mb: chickpeas?
me: yes
i was making hummus one day and testing the chickpeas for tenderness
mb: with your shirt?
me: one of them jumped down my shirt and got stuck
mb: are you ascribing agency to the chickpea?
me: yes. yes i am
here...read it for yourself
mb: haha
it's the classic story, really; fall, then redemption; dilemma, and reconciliation.
you have the same basic plot here as in most jane austen novels.
except instead of a poor virtuous woman you have a chickpea.
me: lol
maybe i'm the poor virtuous woman
taken advantage of by a chickpea
and the lima beans are redemption
?
mb: haha. an uncommunicative chickpea who refuses to confess its true feelings until the lima
beans bring him to proper temperature.
10:48pm
***
we then discussed veggie tales, jimmy carter, peanuts and boxes of junk in our parents' garages. and then i wrote my post...which you can read here on July 8. it has nothing to do with chickpeas, but owes a lot to mb. thanks, friend.
10 comments:
an uncommunicative chickpea who refuses to confess its true feelings until the lima beans bring him to proper temperature.
hahahahahaha. Seriously. With friends like that, you'll never be short on blog fodder. And it should console you to know that I am terrified of meeting our standards as well - I think of myself as a pretty whiny writer. :-)
P.S. What's worse, I wrote those standards I'm afraid of.
nakiru - i love you already. thanks for stoppin by! and i'm glad i'm not the only scared one :P
Yay! Definitely looking forward to some more fun reads, you scheduled blogger you.
Loved it, Annie. I figured out I moved seven times in seven years during my college career, and can definitely empathize with the transient-ness. Until two years ago, I could fit all of my earthly belongings in my Ford Focus, and I was proud of it! Sadly, my house still looks as if college students live here. I keep thinking I should paint my walls or do something that a homeowner would do, but I think to myself, "What if something happens and I have to move? What if I have to sell the house?"... Weird, huh?
jaime - isn't that the irony? as soon as you feel at home enough to decorate, something happens and you move. maybe that isn't ironic. alanis has ruined my understanding of irony.
props, ag. The pleasure is, as usual, mine, and the post wistful and moving. Well done.
thank you, sir.
Annie,
I am procrastinating my writing project as we speak. Hoo-ah.
I was excited when I read "mb" and for a second, I was thinking that the talk of jane austen novels and plot trajectories meant I must have just been writing to you when I was out of my mind. But no such luck. MB (the other one), you seem awesome; Annie, your blog is amazing, and next time you make hummus, I'm coming over. I'll bring frozen lima beans. (This offer is metaphorical and . . . otherwise. Unless you decide it's the lima beans that take advantage of you. I'll not be the vehicle of your novelistic downfall.)
p.s. Your example was actually irony. Props.
mel! i always love it when you stop by. thanks for using me to procrastinate. drinks soon? yes, please. and yay for correct use of irony! so does the fact that not all of alanis' examples are actually irony make the song itself ironic? do tell. love you. good luck on your project.
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