Walking on Air

Well, well, well. It is nearly September and only now am I arriving at topic #40. I need to make a serious run this fall to complete all 100 subjects by Dec 31, midnight. What have I been doing all summer? It's dusty in here. There's a cobweb! Two!!! Damn spiders. The least they could do is write a little instead of spinning all that nonsense. I wish I could say I've been too busy to write. To some degree, I s'pose I have. But my niece McKenna might argue in a court of law I had plenty of time to rack up thousands of Webkinz bucks so she could buy the state of California for her pet canary. That took a few hours of idly playing stacked solitaire while sipping a cocktail and "winding down" as I call it. I am very stressed out, people. I spend hours a day on a computer multi-tasking with a variety of applications, completing project after project so the first thing I want to do when I'm done with that is get right back on the horse and mouse click my way through 537 hands of easy peasy solitaire for school kids. It's relaxing. I wish the coins were real. I'm nearly out of Jack. The point of this whole thing is today's topic, which is: why I want one of those Mac Airbooks or Air MacBooks or that impossibly thin laptop with the Apple on it that has zero capability but looks absolutely stunning on your lap in a coffee shop accessing stocks. I do not drink coffee. I have no stocks. More than likely I would be drinking a Lemon Lime G2 (shout out, Roni!) and accessing on-line roulette, but whatever the case, how cool would that be?? I have been lugging around this Toshiba Satellite laptop (named, I presume, for the object most like it in weight) for over 4 years and every time I see someone with an Air I feel fat. It doesn't matter how much I work out, how much I starve myself, how much shorter I cut my hair...one look at that Mac and I'm thinking Lipo. I would dearly love to send my Toshiba into orbit and approach one of those pastel t-shirted fellas in the nearest Mac store and get hooked up. I would even bring my own manila envelope carrying case. Having read all the reviews, I'm well aware it would be a colossal mistake technology-wise to invest in something incapable of staying on for more than 7 minutes because an 8-minute battery weighs too much, BUT I would never have to use the word schlepp again. Even though I've discovered the Air has no CD drive, I would act surprised about that after buying it and then remark again how thin it looks. And, I would forgive the inaccessability of its ports. So what if it's hard to plug in a flash drive or some silly cable if you want to sit at a table? Move!! Get on a flight. Who the hell's gonna stare at you at the library anyway??? You're destined for Hollywood with an Air under your arm. I think if I had the Air I'd write more. I would write more and e-mail my files to my big Mac for storage so's not to bog my Air down. I would be a stealth writer. Mobile. Flexible. I could write outside. In the park. On a bench. Surrounded by life. Thoughts would pour out of me for 7 solid minutes. Then I could move inside, near an outlet, meet other Mac Air people who also need an outlet. I could bring a surge protector. I could be popular!! Even as I write this I feel clunky, awkward and alone. I can't think of a single moment when anyone has asked me about my Toshiba. It still has XP. The screen is pretty big. The battery weighs more than a toddler. I pulled it out on an airplane once and the woman next to me frowned. Frowned and shifted to the farthest corner of her middle seat. All the babies started crying again. All the babies. Embarrassed, I mumbled something about needing to re-pack my bag and put it away. Had that been the Mac Air....well, I don't have to tell you it's the difference between getting a highlight and stretching those roots for another month. My laptop has been good to me, don't get me wrong. Yeah, it's big and it's a little slow, but I don't want to abandon it. I just need a break. I need to see other laptops. I'm sure once I take the Mac Air out on the town I'll realize how much better I have it at home. It's a moment of weakness - form over function. It's hard not to give in. So I will dangle it like a carrot... write your SECOND novel on the Mac Air... by then it will likely have been reduced to a microchip shot into my brain, adding a mere .00000012 ounces to my overall bodyweight and requiring nothing more than a passing thought to piss out an entire work of art. Ah, Macintosh, I salute thee.

Write Stuff

I wonder if we should stop telling kids they can be anything they want to be. It's a nice sentiment, but 40 years later I am still not a novelist. I am everything but a novelist. Except I'm not a very good swimmer, I can't fly a helicopter and the officer who pulled me over did not fully understand my objective of someday breaking the sound barrier as my 2nd grade teacher Mrs. Gusky confirmed I one day would. On the flip side, I can build a website, I know a lot about golf and I make a mean cheese tray. Oddly, none of those things came up when I was in kindergarten. All fantasies aside, I have always wanted to be a writer. It's the one constant in a long list of professions I once aspired to and a host of others I actually engaged in. If I dreamt of being an astronaut, I was writing in space. If I imagined myself playing major league baseball (not just during the war), I was revealing my secret life of 'roids and whiskey in a stirring autobiography. If I ever made it into the ballet, well, hilarity ensues when I put pen to paper in a tell-all about how I duped the folks at the International School of Ballet (or "bal - lay" as I pronounce it per Billy Elliot). To finally write a book of consequence would be the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to get something organized, lengthy and complete on paper. In 5th grade, I showed signs of actually getting the job done when I penned (literally) "Rescue from Devil Shark Island." It was pages and pages and pages of my handwriting in blue ink. I illustrated the cover myself. I think it was about getting rescued from Devil Shark Island. At age 10, living in south central lower Michigan, you can imagine how many shark attacks I had endured. I lived in constant fear of shark attacks. I avoided the lakes. I skimmed the pool profusely before entering, always mindful of the deep end. I checked the filter often. I was fascinated by the everpresent possiblity that I could actually be attacked and eaten alive by a shark. As a kid, I poured my heart out about it in one of my best works of fiction to date. Since then, I have written an awful lot of crap about stuff I don't know and mildly gotten away with it. What I haven't done is written much about what I've actually done. "Write what you know" is what they always say to writers struggling with that first novel. Did I mention I wanted this to be a lengthy book? It would be a little less than stellar to put what I know in a book. I know how to change a tire. I know how to make a sandwich. I know how to mix a cocktail. I know how to play softball. I know when I have "my days" (as my Oma used to call that time of the month) I will cry at some point during SportsCenter. I know how to run a golf tournament. I know how to use Word and Excel and Powerpoint. I know how to edit videos. I know how to tell time. I am a good texter. The jobs I've actually held reveal little more about what I know: newspaper carrier, pizza delivery person, teacher, coach, training video producer, director of communications and training, graphic designer, web designer, I.T. manager, dancer (still paying attention?!), entrepreneur, average speller, stand-up comedian, tournament director. In recent years, I would say the bulk of my written work can be found in e-mails littered across cyberspace. I've posted content to a number of websites. My thoughts are trapped in a few cell phones here and there, some discarded for the next best thing in technology. But there's no cohesion. There's no focus. There's no plot. There might be some characters, but what are they doing? How do I write a book about a gal growing up in the midwest who has a nice family and likes volleyball? One time, in college, she delivered pizzas. Now she is a webmaster. The end. BOR-ing. I think if they're gonna tell you from day one you can be anything you wanna be (or all you can be and then some), they should also can the "write what you know" shit. The two don't jive. My new advice to myself so I can finally be a novelist is: be what you are and write what you wanna be. You can use it, too.