I need to get it back. My world has rid me of music-making moments…almost entirely of my own doing. It’s my creative cycle. I distance myself from it, almost as if protecting myself from my own failure. “Saving myself” from music nearly does me in after a while. Finally I find my feet again and turn my fingertips purple as I climb back from absence, white flesh scraping across steel strings; bar-chord formations locking my wrist in a death grip of tension, I fret, backtracking until I can no longer feel the tips. Why I punish myself this way, I’ll never know. I shudder to peel away the layers in 50-minute psychological sprints.

Some things are like painting on porcelain pigs — it takes time to build up a good coat of paint. And while you’re brushing colour across the stark white surface, you think it will never be covered. At first, the difference is very visible: brush strokes of plum vineyard across toilet bowl roundness, transparent and contrasting. Then with each additional layer of wispy plum streaks, they start coming together to form an opaque purple coating that looks solid from a distant but feathered on closer inspection. Life is like that: first you need to take the time to do the painting, but you also need to let the time be and not rush it. You need to allow projects, relationships, plans and ideas grow layer by layer until something emerges or something is covered with result. Is it bad that I want my painted pig to save me money, too?

Only in Florida does it feel like July in February. This is my first time on a vacation south and I love it. To wear flip-flops at night on the back step and swim in an outdoor pool with no temperature-tensed muscles in shock from the chill of the water is a novelty for Canadians who don’t live between Vernon and Vancouver Island, BC.
I am in a bit of shock, wondering if my boots, coat, hat and mittens will be fine left in the car at Buffalo airport, while I luxuriate in a tank top, a short jean skirt and summer flats.
We went to the beach last night and watched the sun setting, fish jumping out of the water, pelicans cruising a straight line a foot above the ocean water and diving a few feet below, herons posing for the cameras, still as posts, stars of their show.
Fishermen, women and children scattered the stone wharves launching their lines for a grab of the teeming schools we could all see swimming just below the surface. But these fish are professionals. They know a thing or two about dodging these earnest attempts to snare them on a hook. Nature always finds a way to fight back and survive when it needs to.

Ever hear of Meet Ups? They are clubs/social groups who form from people who sign onto Meetup.com to find each other based on hobbies/interests/passions/current causes and all kinds of nutty things. The only way I’ve used Meet Ups so far is to find other knitters in my city of residence and get together with them. It works really well. I moved to Burlington in November and started the Burlington Knitters’ Pub Night using this method. I have about 22 knitters signed up. We’ve been going strong since then. What strikes me are the odd groups that form — some people would say knitting is odd. But what is even freakier is the list of the most popular topics and/or clubs that people join and the list of growing topics. I’ve highlighted a few, but you can find them all, and stranger ones at: Meetup.com.

Check them out:

Popular Topics
* Atheists
* Beppe Grillo
* Book Club
* Chihuahua
* Democratic Party
* Dungeons & Dragons
* Entrepreneur
* French Language
* Ghost Tracking
* Investor’s Business Daily
* Italian Language
* Japanese Language and Culture
* Knitting
* Moms
* New In Town
* Pagan
* Poker
* Pug
* Ron Paul 2008
* Scrapbooking
* Spanish Language
* Stay At Home Moms
* Travel
* Witches
* Writers

And here is the list of Growing Topics…enjoy!
Growing Topics

* Aesthetic Nurse
* Anti-Police Misconduct
* Any Woman For Peace
* Badnarik for Congress
* Capitalist Party
* Community Salvage
* Craigslist
* Crop Circles
* Espionage
* Freecycle
* Friendster
* Furniture Refinishing
* Geology
* Gifted Children
* Indian Point
* Joyce Meyer Ministries
* Mix Making
* Monty Python
* Neal Boortz Radio Show
* Newt Gingrich
* Psychopathic Records
* Red Hat Society
* Rush Limbaugh
* Savage Nation
* Web Comics

Wow. My head has been splitting since about 2pm today — so much so that I feel sick this afternoon. I figured it was because the barometric pressure dropped and thought I’d do a little research to confirm. Then I discovered that Weather.com has an Aches and Pains Index!
I checked my area and sure enough, on a scale from 1 to 10, we are currently at a ‘9′ and the Aches and Pains potential are very high. Not crazy!
Why is this so important? The index takes not only barometric pressure into account but the temperature, wind, absolute humidity and many other factors. All I got out of Environment Canada is a weather warning that says we have a ’strong low pressure system’ coming through.
Plus, it’s not just the pressure. It’s all the factors. But someone has taken the time to calculate, establish and maintain an index that can allow people like me to confirm and/or take preventative medication for the pain.
Thank you, Weather.com.

Writers tend to not like their day jobs — actors, artists and musicians are faced with a similar fate: a job that we do to pay the bills so we can keep creating at night. I’ve enjoyed hefty chunks of other days job as they have involved a lot of writing and strategic communications work, which I really like, but I’ve still not been happy and have eventually moved on. Now I am in a position that is fantastic with people who are amazing. Yes, some days I’d like to be asleep under the covers, but that likely more because I’m not going to bed early enough or I’ve been writing at night, too, and am fried. My job is great. I really love it and it feels wonderful when that happens. I will tell you what my day job is and send you to our website when it has been redesigned. We’ve got an awful website at the moment which does not reflect us at all. More on that down the road…

I should be able to just whip through this stuff now…but it seems that every chapter has its challenges. I’ve taken a break — I’m having a decaff Early Grey tea and that is helping..nothing like a cup of tea to set me straight. I’m feeling inspired again. Incubating is a writer’s best friend.

Post-prison means post-traumatic stress syndrome — the subject of my last few chapters of the book as my leading man comes home to his family after almost a year in an African prison. I’m so close and yet so far — close to finishing the complete draft — so far from final product once a publisher gets their critical eye on it. All that matters is the story gets out and this family heals.

Getting this close to the end only means you are also close to the next new beginning. When I finish these two chapters I’m working on, I get ready for revisions on the whole thing all over again. Writing is full of cycles; there are no true beginnings or endings. It’s one ongoing journey with all kinds of phases. A philosopher might say phases have beginnings and endings and they do but they all gel together in a whole bunch of greys.
I have a bunch of edits I should input before I move on to the chapter writing — or should it be the other way around?

I’ve been thinking about my online presence…it needs work. I’ve got two blogs that I manage to forget about a lot of the time. I have a neat website Thursday Night Cafe that needs redesign and I have so many interests I can’t pick just one. I want my Thursday Night Cafe to be about art, writing, knitting, communications and creativity…Those things are not necessarily all ‘together’ but it’s what I like. I do like this blog concept so I think I’ll link to both my blogs. I guess I could tie knitting in when I discuss creativity…knitting is great for illustration and analogy. I should be able to make it work…stitch it all together. :0)