Day: January 10, 2005

Captured imagination

By / January 10, 2005 / 8 Comments

I figured out a reason that I have done so little writing in the past 5 or 6 years. I’ve been doing lots of reading. When my imagination is tangled up in someone else’s story there doesn’t seem space for my own stories to develop. My imagination has been captured and I can only free it by finishing the book. Unfortunately without a book in process I end up feeling at loose ends and bored. What I need to realize is that boredom is not a bad thing. When I have no book to read I have to exert myself to find something to do. When I have no book to read I do more sewing, more organizing, more creating.

What all of this indicates to me is that I need to shift my book reading behavior. Rather than racing through books to get to the end and then grabbing another book, I need to savor a book. I need to make rules about how much reading I can do in a day. I don’t need to be checking out stacks of books each time I go to the library, just one or maybe two good ones. In short I need to regulate my reading so that I have more time in my life for other things.

It is a matter of prioritization. I need to decide which things are most important to me and do those first. Reading a book is rarely going to rank at the top of that list. Unless it’s Lois MacMaster Bujold. Pretty much everything goes on hold when Bujold has a new book out.

Financial squeeze

By / January 31, 2013 / 5 Comments

I keep trying to figure out how to squeeze our expenses even smaller. Unfortunately the highest ticket items are things like medical insurance and car insurance and car payments. I can’t change those without making major priority shifts which affect the whole family. I suppose a second car is a luxury, but giving up the beetle would feel like failure to us all. And we aren’t failing. We are continueing to meet necessary expenses and will continue to do so through March. The balances in the accounts seem a little thin right now, but that is because we’re due for our next contracted payment. So, I need to stop staring at numbers and go enjoy the fact that Howard is at home.