Volume One.
of three.
An all new time suck has begun.
For those of you who don't get NPR, Mark Twain wrote an autobiography that he insisted not be published until one-hundred years after his death. He died in 1910.
Actually for those of you who don't get NPR, Mark Twain was the writer of several classic 19th century novels including Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.
Still nothing?
Mark Twain wrote books.
I like to read books.
This is a big book.
But it brings me to the point of my story which is the "Time Suck."
I first heard this term used to describe work email. The person who used it was describing how much wasted time she was spending checking and responding to her email. Especially all those email strings that she wasn't necessarily a part of, but had been cc'ed every step of the way because the corporate culture is all about real-time information. (The fact that his leads to fear and hostility should be the basis of someone else's blog entirely)
But I am a "Time Suckoholic" and a procrastination queen. This autobiography is twenty pound of perfect excuse to turn the rest of the world off.
But I can't turn the world off. I try, but it just won't let me. Exactly three pages into the introduction (the actual book doesn't begin until page 209. . . freakin heaven) Calvin pushes the pages aside and insist I tell him which Angry Birds level I was on.
"I don't know"
"But Dad"
"I don't know"
"But dad!"
This is where I snapped and sent him to his room until he turn into a polite boy.
He raced away screaming crying.
And as he raced away screaming crying, he shouted out this line:
"But dad . . . how many seconds is that?"
"Till your mother gets home!" I yelled and then went back to the book.
The introduction of this all great time suck began with the usual acknowledgements and thank-yous, then it dives right in to the story of how Mark Twain began several times to write his autobiography and then stopped. Starting stopping starting stopping. Each start with a fresh new take, a bright new plan, a brilliant new future. Then it wasn't until he seized upon the idea of stenography and dictating his story that he really got to work in earnest. As I mentioned, this part doesn't begin until page 209.
And then I got to a line which made me think for a second about my own story. I will paraphrase, because a blog should not have footnotes, so it goes something like this:
Every man feels that his experience is unlike that of everybody else and therefore he should write it down. He finds also that everybody else has thought and felt the same things and therefore he should write it down.
or some thing like that.
Everyone should write their own story, for it is both unique and universal.
Note here that not only did I shorten the sentiment, but I also remained gender neutral.
(Side note: All authors steal concepts and either refine them or bastardize them and some authors can share the same sentiment with two very different styles. Kipling wrote " . . . and ne'er the Twain shall meet." in regards to the linguistic differences between British English and American English. Wilde wrote of it too but said "Two continents divided by a common language." Gotta love Oscar.)
Either way, the line reminded me that I have to write. Not just because it's something to do in those narrow moments between living and sleeping, working and cooking, playing and punishing, but because its good for me. And it might be good for someone else too. I might be the time suck someone has been waiting since christmas for.
Sure there will be false starts. In fact there have been more than a few already. I might not even start until page 211. And it is possible that what I want is impossible. That being an artist and being an actual adult are just too far removed from one another. And that to pursue one is to damage the other. But I gotta do what I gotta do. And I gotta try.
And to cap off these last bits of prose, twenty minutes after I relegated my little monster to his room, I found him laying on his butt in the hallway putting his tiny little feet into Taylor's enormous shoes.
"Are you ready to be a polite boy?" I asked.
"I haven't decided yet." he said.
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