Overcoming the Dreaded P’s

I am someone who loves to procrastinate. I have been wanting for few days to sit down and put pen to paper; or as is the case with me commit thumbs to type away on my phone incessantly until a verbose of sorts has been formed; mull over it for a day or two, come back to it, edit it and once I am satisfied with the quality of the verbose on offer-send it off into its intended destination to take its iota amongst the other roaming data in the world of blogosphere.

 

You see I am a perfectionist too. Being a procrastinator and a perfectionist are two traits that a writer (or anyone else) should not have to deal with simultaneously. I think I have become someone who over the years perfected the art of procrastination. I will delay something until it can be delayed no more. Until I have no choice but to see to it.

 

It is not like I have hit the dreaded writer’s block, on the contrary my creative juices have been overflowing of late so much so that I have several posts that I started and never got the chance to finish or publish. I blame the World Cup and the rare glimpses of sunshine we are currently experiencing in England. Even the meteorologists have us believing that at times the temperatures have been on par with that of Brazil… really?  I know I am sceptical of such claims too but us Brits like to indulge in a bit of a hyperbole where the weather is concerned.

 

Of course there are always things, both living and otherwise that irk the peaceful equilibrium of my cerebral cortex. Unfortunately for the culprits involved in challenging my peaceful existence they serve as a great musing for my next blog post. Karmically, it provides me and you with something to ponder over; though I always give them the joy of anonymity, at least where living beings are concerned.

 

Unlike the usual writer’s block that most writers stumble on I have been contending with a dread of different calibre- procrastination and perfection. With the myriad of things happening around me, inspiration seems to be just round the corner. But procrastination would have me delay inspiration under the clever guise of perfectionism. To borrow Freema Agyeman’s words “I swing between procrastination and being really thorough so either way things aren’t getting done quickly”.

 

But great posts like all good things such as goal-line technology are worth procrastinating over and perfecting, because once they materialise we can all marvel over them, dispute them or just be indifferent. I am still undecided if that goal in the France v Honduras game was a goal or not.

 

And you know what being indifferent, undecided, on the fence, are all fine too…

 

Unless you are a referee or reading a great post I procrastinated laboured over and perfected for you to marvel at… In which case it isn’t!!!

 

Weekly Writing Challenge: Three Ways To Go Gonzo

I don’t know your name but excuse me miss, why do you blog?

“In a nutshell…to stay literate”, I said bluntly to the six foot something, dark eyed enquirer as he tossed away stray strands of mousy blonde mid length tresses away from his face.

He looked confused, scratched the nape of his neck, made a few inaudible grunts and remarked “but you don’t strike me as an illiterate, care to explain further..?!”

I smiled at his nonplussed expression and I joked “don’t let those geeky glasses fool you, love”.

I watched him as he eased himself further into his seat, lifted up the armrest separating him from the seat next to him and slowly loosen his tie. A stripy silver and white skinny tie which camouflaged with the silver striped shirt that served as its backdrop beneath the navy blue pin striped suit ensemble. I couldn’t help but think what possessed the guy to adorn this many violent concussions of stripe and silver. Each to their own and that, I quickly reminded myself.

He gazed at me pensively, a look I was all too familiar with. So I decided to put him out of his misery. I too shuffled myself further into my seat and rested my head against the window to mirror his languid disposition.

After pausing to allow the conductor to announce few housekeeping rules on the train and pointing out to the passengers the obvious: “smoking isn’t permitted on this train” in case they missed the various preposterous and piercing signs displayed throughout the four carriages of the train; and apologising profusely for the delay; I began explaining to this friendly stranger sat opposite of me on the now VERY delayed 20:35 train from London to York, my thought processes. Yes, train commutes are perhaps one of the more bizarre places to be digesting blogging quandary.

I took a deep somewhat exaggerated breath, maybe to make my new found audience understand the gravity of what I was about to unleash on him. I explained that “George Orwell prophesised the current situation that I, YOU and many others find ourselves in today. Newspeak he called it and that was in 1964. Sixty five years after he made that assertion, my friend, he might just be vindicated”.

I paused for a moment, to check that I haven’t bored and consequently lost the poor fella. To my astonishment, it turned out he was all ears and thus instructed me “to carry on” with my synthesis.

So I began my soliloquy, or rather monologue because my audience was now hooked on my every word.

“We are now well and truly caught up in a never ending vortex of Bad English that Orwell foretold. I find myself in the dilemma that is pretentious diction in my 9-5 and urban slang in my 24/7. This is a catch 22 and I don’t want to upset the apple cart, but let’s face it the chickens are finally coming home to roost. I mean why are we catching the number 22, and why on God’s good green earth would a cart bursting with fruits be upset with me. Idiom hell, if you ask me. I didn’t think I had it in me to be upsetting apples too and don’t get me started on the chicken; let’s just hope they aren’t coming to my home to roost or whatever else they intend to do.

Once I am done with idiomatic hell I enter slang-ville torture. Like mandem them ting tings ain’t cool like ya’ feel me init? Rah bruv they chattin’ bare breeze n’dat init!! I know I am going off on a tangent here, but seriously how can anyone with their cognitive abilities intact utter such gibberish or worst still inflict it on poor unassuming folks like me, hmm…?

Mind boggling stuff, my love, mind boggling stuff hence, why everyone needs to blog. To better their diction, which by the way should include fully spelt out words as opposed to giving me CBA for an answer. Because lovie, if you Can’t Be Asked, logic would tell you to not even bother texting an acronym denoting the very thing you are unable to do”!

“That is George Orwell apocalypse right there mate”!

Now, it was his turn to make a point with his breathing. He exhaled loudly as to mark the intake of all that malachi I just offloaded on him.

Whilst he never interjected once and politely nodded intermittently, though I can’t help but think he might have been slightly relieved when the conductor announced that the train was slowly approaching its final stop in however many minutes it took. That wry smile he shot me was all but too revealing.

Once we arrived at our destination, we both concurred that at least this exercise in diatribe wasn’t lost in vain. It helped us with our respective late night commuting doldrums. At the very least we barely noticed the 2.5 hour train journey we just endured. As we departed the train we both laughed at this declaration, bid each other a good night; disappearing into the darkness of the night and returning to what we were, are total strangers!

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/gonzo-writing-challenge/

A Nation of Poets and Bards

It has taken me an awfully long time to finally make a blog. Three years if memory serves me right. I never quite understood what it all entailed other than of course doing the obvious- blogging. Therefore, I have been doing a bit of scouring in the hope of understanding how to utilise this site and after a fair bit of searching and stumbling on few illustrious blogs, it dawned on me that I needed to ‘introduce myself to potential readers’. Thanks Daily Post for pointing that out to me, YAY!

Now how can I encapsulate what this blog is about in a nutshell …? Hmmm let’s give it a go.

So legend has it that I come from a nation with avid oral traditions – not in the kinky sense but rather in storytelling. So detailed and rich it is that a mere narration of trivia could give an acclaimed Steven Spielberg movie a run for its money and that isn’t hyperbole.

Growing up I often had the (dis) pleasure of receiving handwritten or tape recorded messages (yes folks I’m from the Walkman era and I have just given away my age bracket, shoot) from distant relatives to family friends and characters I have never met; where a simple hello turned into a poetical portent in itself. Sometimes it even made me wonder if these people were competing in a bardic poetry competition. Clearly their poetastery was lost on me then and naturally it took me a while to understand that this was a little more than an emotive grunting. More often than not these messages started with something along the lines of:

I give thou sincerest of greetings

One that stems out of the

Hollowest of thy muscular organs

Transported to thou through the air waves

That distance us

*Side note: if you are unfamiliar with the culture and such traditions you might be stunned when you find a long lost relative showering you in person with such elaborate romanticised, elongated passages, always accompanied by the continental and arduous four kisses on either cheeks. Perhaps even uncalled for if you are lacking a bit on the emotional side of things. Alas, the times I miss-calculated the number of kisses required or rather their timing and landed myself in the awkwardness that is kissing someone’s lips…YIKES… I know!! Oh the utter embarrassment. I better move along because that warrants mortifying memories to come forth.

So by not following this long line of traditions I feel as if though I’m betraying my ancestors and denying my heritage. I am not an oral person (again not in the kinky sense, so please do refrain from such connotations). I am more of a writer. I could never relay a diatribe, a discourse orally. I was never blessed with the “gift of the gab”. But I do have a way with words, or so I am told (hmmmm pauses to think this through. Really now isn’t the time to be doubting oneself).

I feel as if though I’m harbouring a defect gene, some kind of gremlin in my makeup for not having such gift/burden (depending on what angle you are looking at it from). I come from a family of talkers, a nation of story tellers. We weren’t dubbed “a nation of poets and bards” for no reason. I think Margaret Laurence was onto something when she gave us that title.

But in my defence poetry (or rather prose) doesn’t have to be limited to the spoken format. Hence, why I created this blog after much debate that is because I am a highly indecisive individual; as you will come to know throughout the course of this blog. And whilst we are on the subject of my inherent indecisiveness, I guess now is a good time (as any) to confess that due to this little idiosyncrasy of mine I wasn’t able to categorise this blog into one specific genre.  I mean why pigeon hole yourself..?! The possibilities are endless so why not explore whatever topic or put forward whatever idea/problem/ vituperation/ personal opines and otherwise, eh..?!

I am very aware that I have just given a long winded diatribe of an explanation to the question posed at the beginning of this blog post. I am not good at explaining things so I like to think that I have done a pretty darn good job at answering: what is this blog about..? Having said that, if you still feel that you are none the wiser then hey, stick around and maybe we will figure it out together, one day, fingers crossed.

And on that note…

Happy reading folks!