Posts I Almost Wrote

Happy New Year! Based on what happened at the Capitol last Wednesday, it doesn’t seem like 2021 will be better than 2020 thus far, but I’m going to keep hoping.

Back to my mundane life: I have been wanting to write quite a bit. Actually writing, however, doesn’t happen often, mostly because when the end of the day comes and my son is in his crib,* I just want to sit on the couch and read mindless novels, very few of which are worthy of being discussed here. For the past couple months, I have been keeping a list of topics I could blog about, but I never wrote the posts. Instead, I’m going to summarize what could have each been 500+-word posts in a few short blurbs:

1. The Anchoress by Robyn Cadwallader. In medieval days, some women believed God was calling them to shut themselves away from the world in a tiny room attached to the side of a church. That parish’s anchoress then served as spiritual guide to the parishioners and lived in the cell until she died, never setting foot in the outside world. The book was a fictional take on the life of an anchoress in the year 1290. Fascinating stuff, and it shows that human nature never changes. This was one of the better (or at least more thought provoking) books I’ve read in the past few months.
2. Gossip mongers on Reddit. Don’t ask me how I got into the cesspool of pseudointellectual drivel that is Reddit because I really don’t remember. I never actually created an account on there, but I lurked in the background, reading posts about popular Christian fundamentalist YouTubers/Instagrammers (i.e., “influencers”) and how they are spreading “judgmental,” “tone-deaf,” and “neo-Nazi trad-fem” views. I do agree that most of these “influencers” do a pretty bad job of promoting Christian values, but I disagree with the Reddit crowd that they need to be “cancelled.” Eventually, I got fed up with reading the word “toxic” all the time and hearing witch-like cackles of glee every time they caused an influencer to lose a partnership with a brand. So I stopped going on Reddit. Biggest waste of time ever. Then I went to confession and scrubbed that garbage from my mind.
3. I wanted to post something about the election and other controversial current events, but everything I could say has already been said more concisely and intelligently by those more articulate than me.
4. Related to my read of The Anchoress, I was thinking a lot about suffering and what that means in our super-comfortable world. (This topic shows up in my thoughts fairly often.) However, I can never manage to say anything about it that’s not rambling and incoherent. I tried writing a post, but it ended up at about 1,000 words and went nowhere.
5. Related to the Reddit stupidity, I was thinking that if a person posts things publicly on any social media platform or blog, they then open themselves to criticism and even downright rudeness from the hoi polloi. They shouldn’t claim to be “persecuted,” unless they are literally being stalked, which should not happen, even if they do put themselves in the public eye. If they lose sleep at night over it, they need to stop posting or change the content of their posts. Another thing: What you see on Instagram or YouTube is probably only 0.0001% of a person’s real life, and it’s probably so strategically edited and curated that it’s likely even less than that. An entire human being can’t be judged based on such a minuscule portion of their “life.”
6. Praying the Rosary. I am going to make an entire post out of this. At some point.

*He is 2 years old already, and he is huge. Next steps: transitioning to toddler bed and potty training. Fun times await!

Early NaNoWriMo Planning

NaNoWriMo has revamped its website, at preview.nanowrimo.org, and it looks really good. I’m unclear on whether the new version will be live by November 1, but as long as we get to use the nice new version at some point, I’m happy. I finally figured out how to change the silly username I’ve had since college, so I’m now “MaggieMadlyWriting” if you want to be my “buddy.” My avatar is a lizard wearing a hat because the picture amused my simple mind.

Now, about that idea… one particular news story has been haunting me since I heard about it in early September 2017. You probably don’t remember it in the onslaught of other horrid news stories since then, but it began with Coricidin and ended with domestic violence. What I wanted to do was rewrite the story to give it a happy ending.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get 50,000 words out of the idea, but I want to at least write something. This is also the first halfway decent idea I’ve had since, well, forever that wasn’t based on something I’ve already written. I have some ideas already in a notebook and on a flash drive, so perhaps that will carry me through.

Thursday Three #45

1. If you want to read something extremely creepy, I would recommend Josh Malerman’s novel Inspection. It’s like a mix of The Giver and Never Let Me Go, but darker than both of those combined. I would go so far as to say that it reminds me of something Dean Koontz or Stephen King would write… and that’s a compliment. The premise: What happens when two crazy scientists decide to conduct an experiment to determine whether genius really is distracted by the opposite sex?
2. Having a child has given me incentive to write, which doesn’t make sense. I thought that once I had the baby, I would be tired 24/7 and never feel like doing anything. The opposite is true. It’s almost like I finally realized my own mortality and that I had better accomplish what I want to before I’m dead. What a strange feeling.
3. Notre Dame. It is a shame that the cathedral burned, and is probably symbolic of the decline of Western civilization, but as with most news events, there is nothing that most people, as individuals, can do about it. We can pray, and that’s basically it. Freaking out is not going to solve anything. If you want to slow the decline of Western civilization, work on your own life and your own mentality first.