Today is past the usual day for Monday’s Kick-Ass Prompt of the Week (KAPOW), but I’m combining posts for a while. I’ve been feeling overwhelmed. I was going to say a little overwhelmed, but that would be an oxymoron.
My troubles generally stem from my ability to say no to others, yes, but mostly to myself. I have trouble differentiating between what I can do and what I should do. I’m not going to get into specifics; this is a writing blog, not a personal flog – I mean blog. Heh.
Part of the problem has been because I’m not thinking of writing as work. I have tried to talk myself into it aloud for some time. My husband has demonstrated a better grasp than I have. He just now came up to me with a question about a 5-gallon bucket of green beans he had just picked from the garden. When he saw my computer display with the blog post on one side overlapping my WIP he said, “Oh, you’re working. Never mind. I’ll take care of it.” What a guy.
I had the good fortune to be able to work from home for a number of years for an answering service. When I answered phones in the office, I worked five eight-hour days. From home, I was able to work four ten-hour days. That meant I had three days per week off. The remaining four days I sat my rear in my office chair in front of the computer, donned my headset and logged in. During that ten hours I had three fifteen-minute breaks. It was not a hardship, other than having to eat fast, a habit I’m still trying to break.
It was easier because I wore a headset and responded to calls as they came in. I had no control over the frequency or the type of call – some were retail sales, some were customer service, some were after-hour calls for professionals and more. The work desktop and the calls coming in were the driving force.
Now that I’m retired from the workplace, when I sit here to write, it’s on me. I’m the driving force. I am also easily distracted. When I was taking calls for work, everybody knew I was working. I didn’t answer the home phone, I didn’t take visitors, I was working. Enforcing that work ethic while I’m writing is more problematic. Some of my family and friends still think of my writing as a hobby. I’m afraid I don’t enforce the do-not-disturb aspect as I should. It’s a balancing act. I’m still working on it.
In that vein, this week’s KAPOW challenge is to write, in 300 words or fewer, a description of something in your workspace. It can be where you work now, have worked or want to work. Narrow the focus to one inanimate object, no matter how large or small – no dialog and no character interaction.
Hmmmm. Looking around my workspace . . .
Ah.
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THE FAILED VIOLET PLANTER
by C J Gorden
Its destiny, its purpose, had been to compliment the leaves and blooms and encompass the soil and roots of a prized dollar-ninety-five Wal-Mart violet purchased at the same time. The two-piece container was designed to be a self-waterer, to draw water from the lower bowl through the unglazed portion of the upper receptacle nested within it in a way that made violet care . . . carefree. It was not to be. The water did not seep upward slowly over time, it flooded the coveted violet’s roots within the month and killed it dead. No one noticed the sodden soil until it was too late to save the violet and the disenfranchised planter was relegated to a small, dilapidated box in a dark closet of shame. After some time had passed the horror had abated and the planter was noticed again.
Fate has provided a new purpose for the former violet planter with the blue crackle glaze. The high-shouldered, gracefully tapered base was judged stable enough to keep rulers, scissors and letter openers upright and the smaller container nested inside it keeps the contents from sprawling. It holds not only an assortment of pens, pencils and highlighters, but a revolving medley of items from the entire household. Among other miscellany there is a crochet hook, a Barbie’s golf club appropriated after a 2-year-old’s attempt to use it to clean a kitten’s ear, an impromptu caliper made from parts of two sewing rulers and across its lip rests a straightened paper clip once used to manually eject a CD from a misbehaving drive. You never know when you might need one of those. No longer a failure, the planter has become a reflection of its environment and is now known as The Pencil Cup.
C J Gorden 