See, I was writing a promised (to me) article on Haiti and it just wasn’t going right. Start, stop. Delete. Start, stop. Delete. Rinse and repeat.

Finally I realized that there was a whole nother way of looking at things hovering at the edge of my mind, that I had been ignoring because… well, my article was written, pretty much (except for the actual writing part) and I really didn’t want to start over. That would be “failing to keep to my plan”!

I decided, though, that that was okay. I won’t say the new article will be much better, or more powerful or anything – but it will be something that seems to want to be written.

… if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up. Anne Lamott

I should have found this quote the other day but it will do just as well for today. Dawn is sometimes a long time breaking.

I had other options for quotes; after all, there are zillions of people who have said quotable things, but what caught my eye about this one was the word “stubborn”.

Stubborn. So often that is a negative. A stubborn child (I was said to be one). A stubborn stain. A stubborn man or woman, who won’t budge from a wrong path. Bad things that won’t go away everywhere are said to be stubborn.

But some things should be, must be stubborn.

Hope. Without that, life would be unendurable for a good portion of the world.

Generosity. I had never thought of a stubborn generosity – of spirit, of time, of money – until I read a future friend’s work that mentioned it. But after that, I’ve seen an abundance of examples of it in many places past and present.

Friendship. Lasting through the good and the bad, pursued despite time and distance, nourished and propped up when it flags, greeted anew after time away – I’d say that many lasting friendships are of the stubborn variety.

Belief. In one’s self or in someone else (or, if you are so inclined, in spiritual matters). For all the pop culture hoopla over believing in yourself, I am not sure all that many do. Even some of the more successful people. They may believe in their abilities, to great monetary or professional success, but in themselves? I’m not so sure, for many. To me that is something much different and separate from just what is conventionally considered success.

And you can hardly do a more stubborn thing than trust. In yourself, surely. That’s a lifelong lesson to be learned, for some. Trusting in someone else is, at times, easier – though still the height of stubbornness.

I think I like this.

Here’s to living a stubborn life today. And all the tomorrows.

“Sufficient unto the day… ”

I think, although I am not going to look it up, that the entire phrase is from the Christian and/or Jewish religious writings and it goes something like “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”, but my mind has not been supplying the fullness of the quote because “the evil thereof” is not material to whatever idea is trying to make its way out of my head. I don’t think.

I am not Christian or Jewish, for the record.

So what is the meaning it holds for me, if any? I am not sure, so why not talk it out and see what comes up?

Did you know the NYTimes had bloggers? I mean, other than the political and cultural/arts ones? I didn’t. Until yesterday. This may seem like a digression (from what, you ask, since you’ve not said anything yet?), but it’s not, exactly. See, I clicked on a link to a blogger who was headed off to a Zen Buddhist retreat and from there to another blogger who was a Zen Buddhist priest who’d recently returned from a Buddhist retreat, where he officiated (if that is the right word). The title of his post caught my eye. “For the time being”.

I am not Buddhist, for the record.

One of the ideas I have in draft – or, actually, a few because it’s a series – is about the life lessons learned from playing Spider Solitaire. Does that sound silly? It sort of does to me, even, though the desire to write them probably has more to do with making the wasted time mean something than that I have any great insights.

Others have to do with opening doors into the past – into ancestors, forbears, those that came before – that had, by me, been previously kept closed and jealously guarded because, well… the life of now was sufficient unto the day, for the time being.  Don’t look back. That’s always been fairly easy for me, because of my upbringing – moving a lot, new schools, new friends, new neighborhoods all the time – to move forward and not look back, although not without regret. This continued in a way as I got older and began my own somewhat unsettled existence. That’s changing now, because of the internet, which is another idea for a post I have, not even quite in draft form yet. I now have People In My Life. Consistently. The same ones, for years and years. It’s a very strange, though welcome, feeling.

I find I have little else to say and if there is any sort of meaning or sense in what I’ve said already, it’s escaped my notice. Still, I’ve never had a problem with randomly blathering on, so…

I’m think I’m just thinking that, perhaps, the day may not really be sufficient. For the time being.

not my cat

Looking around my house this afternoon I noticed that my fridge is freshly cleaned but my kitchen is a mess; all the laundry is washed and dried, but not put away; my mom is all washed and in bed, but her bathroom is only partly cleaned; cat is fed, but she needs water; my… well, no reason to go on and on. You get the idea. I think I may have a problem with finishing things. Or, rather, finishing things which can never really be considered finished. Cycles don’t just end, after all. They come to a stopping place (sometimes) and then start over again.

Me, I think I’ve decided to eliminate the stopping place and just have one cycle roll over into the next, as it’s going to do it anyway. The annoying thing about that, though, is that I never really feel done. With anything (that comes to mind at the moment). Even with a completely clean and laundered house, watered cat, fresh mom and rested self, I tend to get that little niggling feeling that there, surely, is something else yet to do, even if I have no desire or intention of doing it, whatever it is.

Perhaps I should take up meditation. I’ve never been very good at that, though.

I’m not certain any of this has anything to do with my blogroll, but there it is – for some reason, adding people to my blogroll brought on this train of thought. Possibly because that too is a thing that is never really complete. Oh, I guess for some people it is, who add whoever they are going to and that’s that, but for many the basic list is only the beginning.

On that subject I have to make a confession: not only am I, often, a Bad Blogger but I am even more so a Bad Blogroller. Mine is always beginning and never really moving past that. Some people, I know, have huge lists, really long rolls of sites so what I do, when I want to find a new site or an old favorite I’ve lost the address for, is head on over to someone who actually maintains a blogroll and click from there. I always mean to have a really long list, but, well… there you go.

Maybe it has something to do with not accumulating stuff. I don’t, you know, in my offline life. I use my computers until they are, in essence, dented, rusted out and the bumpers are falling off. I’m fine with my clothes, year after year, as long as they are not stained and don’t have too many holes (holey clothing always seeming pass in and out of fashion). I have a few sentimental pieces of antique furniture and some artwork I am fond of, but other than that… Part of it is no doubt due to the fact that I hate shopping, and have money to burn only in rare instances. That can’t be all of it, though. When I was making much more money working in sales or in other jobs and had plenty to burn, I was not much different.

Hmmm. The bulk of my work is stored online. There is little here, inanimate, that has a permanency in my life, that I would grieve over if parted from. Even my cat is a temporary cat, and has been for 17 years now – living with me only until I find her a good home.

You know – it occurs to me that I live, have always lived, ready to leave. And why not? We left a lot, when I was growing up. Still, I should think I’d be over that by now, at my age.

This bears thinking on. Funny what new vistas blogrolls will lead you to, no?