10 Ways to Make the Most of 10 Minutes

File under: posts I wish I had written. Miranda writes an excellent blog.

It’s a rare but beautiful thing:An unexpected gap opens in your otherwise overbooked day. You realize — with disbelief — that you’re actually “free” for a short window. No one’s hair is on fire and there isn’t anything urgent to take care of right now. Maybe the baby who never sleeps finally closes her eyes or your spouse takes the kids out on an errand or you’re between conference calls. Whatever it is, you realize that the next little bit of time is not yet spoken for. The window is too short to dig into a project, but you do have time for something. What do you do?

For many of us, one thing rises reflexively to the top of the list of possibilities: Facebook. (Or whatever social media you happen to prefer.) We fritter away our 10, 20, or 30 minutes scrolling through the minutia and photographic…

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20 March 2013 1

Mom Cannot Live on Blog Alone

I won’t Google that phrase because someone else has surely said it but it just dawned on me, literally, in the cool summer sunrise. After a whirlwind summer of chronicling travels, neuroses and separations it is time to add more intricate structure and depth to living and writing. Inspired by the musings, creativity and work ethic of others – Cristian Mihal, Maggie at Life in a Skillet, Shrimani Senay, Karen Weintraub and Nick Hornby, among them – as well as the flight of my girl off to college, I see that it is time now for the next act.

I’ve been blogging since 2009 about food, life and autism and my hits number merely in the thousands, which is perfectly fine – the whole idea was to write every day, and I am there now. So now it’s time to commit myself, with all that word implies, to devoting my annual September burst of energy to taking years worth of writing and making something of it. Binders, notebooks, post-its and reams of graph paper will all give up their contents to The Cloud and return to Earth as…something that is both fact and fiction. It will take much longer than September to get it down, figure it out and put it in order, so I signed up for a writing group to establish some momentum and deadlines.

But summer isn’t over yet. School will start tomorrow and Labor Day will be here this weekend. I don’t have the luxury of the stretches of quiet time necessary for my project. And so I blog about the small moments so that, come September, I can write about the big ones (and I am pretty sure I have said that before).

29 August 2012 1

The Oracle

I have been reading the letters that inspired – and continue to inspire – LettersHead. She really was ahead of her time; Mom should have been a blogger. Her words are inspiring, sweet, maddening, crazy, funny, wise. The best ones are family updates with a little local history thrown in followed by “I have been reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica on [insert topic here]” with a page or two xeroxed and stapled to the letter. When I read them now I can understand exactly the way she felt as she sat at the typewriter tapping them out, cigarette burning on the ashtray to the right, Hershey bar half out of the wrapper to the left. We may not be passionate about exactly the same things but in large part we are both driven to do what is right for our families and to express it, explain it and expound on it early and often. At least once she signed my name to a Letter to the Editor because she had met her quota for the month.

But a key thing I loved about her was that while on paper should could be relentless, most of the time in person, with the family around, she was such fun. I so wish she had taken the time to write down the stories she spun after dinner – a little less L’Osservatore Romano and a little more Spy Magazine. Both she and Dad had such great stories about the early and mid 20th century (their WWII courtship is a novel in itself) and they were good at telling them. I know that most of us (with some very notable exceptions) do not do them justice in the retelling.

I admit there were days when those postage-paid envelopes with the telltale IBM Selectric type address on them stayed on the counter for a bit until I was ready to open them – but I’m glad I did and I’m glad I kept them.

2 March 2012 2

Steve Martin: Pied Piper with a Banjo

I work out to Steve Martin ‘s ba njo music. I imagine he would be appalled to know that, but then again maybe it’s a marketing idea. I sort of admire people who can go the gym and work out regularly but I am not one of them. The idea of getting in my car and driving somewhere to exercise just seems wrong, not to mention embarrassing for someone who refuses to wear sweatpants anywhere, ever. If it’s too cold to walk outside, looking out the basement window and listening to The Crow gives my mind something wonderful to do while my body is busy being miserable. It’s perfect. Forget Katy Perry, Michael Jackson and the rest of the thumping-base workout music – it all only reminds me of how young I am not. But banjo music brings out the young in everyone. It is inherently happy, endlessly sunny and an invitation to love life. The winter melts to spring, the rural roads stretch before me, and when I am finished I can go and write.

Speaking of which, a while back my daughter and I went to hear Steve Martin himself talk about his life and play a little banjo. At the end of the interview by insipid entertainment reporter Joyce Kulhawik (I am loathe to even give her a link), Mr. Martin took questions. One person whined to him about writer’s block and asked him how he kept himself creative and he was blissfully bemused. In effect, he told her that, having worked so hard to get to this point in his life that he can now pursue his ideas whenever the mood strikes him. No pep talks, no tricks of the trade, just a very candid glimpse of someone who has earned the right to do nothing and thus pursues everything. Think about it – writer, comedian, actor, director, playwright, poet, collector, musician. Even if you did have writer’s block how could you think someone like Steve Martin could provide you with any more wisdom than he already has?

9 February 2012 0

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