The Visible Woman...April 17, 2002

Wednesday, April 17, 2002

what exactly makes this one a favorite, I can't say...this is in our own neighborhood, by the way

"My answer: it is possible to experience the present as the sustained attainment of a goal rather than as an instrumental means toward that end. Writing this book was a matter of living with the process of writing, a perpetual circling that must eventually come to an end."
James Ogilvy in Living Without a Goal explaining how 'completing a book on Goallessnes' could be his goal. (Yes, he capitalizes Goallessness. If I'd read the whole book I'm sure I'd know why. And yes, there is a fair amount of God (god) stuff in it, I think.)

It is not enough to be happy; it is necessary, in addition, that others not be.

getting it done

Naturally, I don't want to get up this morning. But I do. And I have several goals for the day, too. Goals. I once bought a book because I like the title: Living Without Goals. I never got it read, of course. I don't think it was all that good. It rambled. (No surprise there, I guess. What? Yeah, I hear you. After reading this, who am I to say such a thing?) Anyway, I lost track of the physical book before I finished it and so I can't tell you what it advised. (In point of fact, I located the book although I've still only read snippets. But I thought I'd treat you to a quote from it.)

By the way, I occasionally sign up for the free courses at Barnes and Noble 'university.' Usually they are on some WEB tool topic. (The ones I sign up for. They have all sorts.) They notify you that little lessons as they are available. Of course, they want you to buy a book. I never do. (Buy these particular books because I signed up for the course, I mean. We all know. I buy books.)

I rarely finish or do the advised lessons. I signed up for one the other day called GettingThings Done. They want you to buy a book by some guy called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. I'm not linking to any of this because, of course, I don't believe that it will help me or you and I'm certainly not pimping the book which I don't intend to buy. Indeed, I doubt that I'll get the lessons done. (None have been posted yet.) (To Do: (1) Sign up for course on getting things done; (2) Wait for lesson to be posted; (3) repeat (2). I'm productive now.)

I am reading lessons on a Dreamweaver Course right now. I always learn something from such tutorials and lessons. Perhaps it is something I already learned and forgot, but still.

I have a weakness for Self-Help book titles if not the books themselves. I often flip one open in the book store and take a random sentence or paragraph and read it. I particularly liked the titles on the Don't Sweat the Small Stuff series. He should do one on death. Don't Sweat the Small Stuff about Dying. Anyway. I am writing a self-help book. Called Traveling Light. Maybe it's the Traveling Light series? Can I write a self-help book if I don't believe in self-help books? Yes, I think so. (I'm having trouble getting it done, though.)

So I work. I have things to get done today. Done and out of the way. Get things done. I feel like I'm making progress. I field interruptions and I am flipping from one thing to another more than usual. I still feel I'm making progress. I'm in a good mood. And this is in spite of the fact that my little backache keeps coming back and I have a stuffy head.

It's also a day when the gremlins are possessing my machines. I actually use an old laptop and an old desktop at work and, at home, another older laptop for home/travel. Neither one at work is machine enough to keep up with all the windows I want to keep open: e-mail, WEB browsers, PDF files, Word documents, Dreamweaver. So I just run both and go back and forth. Besides, I can always continue to do something if one is busy being locked up or booting! Today the old laptop developed some mighty strange symptoms. Certain info in Browsers wasn't showing up properly, text overlapping and stuff and I opened a WORD document and, I swear, this 14 point Ariel type was showing up as one letter as big as a page. No, I'm serious. I don't have any idea what caused it. I booted and everything looked normal. Go figure. Seriously, maybe it was a font file or something, corrupted in memory. It was so, so strange.

I lunched in the office. Nachos, some raw carrots and a Diet Dr. Pepper. Later I ate a few potato chips and, on the way home, munched some of the awful salty snacks (Honey Barbeque Frito Twirls, I think) left over (and left in the car) from yesterday's drive. I have a wonderful diet, don't I? I hope I live to be 100.

"Ms. Ball," asks the reporter, "To what do you attribute your longevity."

"Eating a complete variety of foods including all the bad ones, drinking alcohol, avoiding exercise and wearing a seatbelt," replies the centenarian. Do you think people will think 100 is old when I'm 100? In 2048?

After work I go home. FFP has gone to the club. I would have gone. Except my drippy nose is bothering me. So I take some Dimetapp and some Echinecea. FFP comes home and stares into the frig, considering going to the store and getting chicken breasts and making chicken sandwiches. I tell him I feel like cereal. After tentatively examining the milk and deciding it's good, I have some cereal. He eats something, maybe a pimento cheese sandwich. I poke around and end up heating up a small amount of leftover Chinese food. We are such gourmands.

I read some of the mounds of papers. I fool around with the computer. I finally get to sleep. My mood is improved but I'm getting physically sick. Isn't that nice?

JUST TYPING
A list of things.
To Do.
Save it for a year.
One of two things.
1. Still need to do them.
2. Can't remember what I was talking about.
Isn't that funny?

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