by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

I seem to be suffering from an acute case of writer's block at the moment. So, I am trying a modified form of stream of consciousness writing to at least put a crack in the dam. Now, some of the problem does, in fact, have to do with certain technical difficulties I have been having of late. Seems that something has been affecting my input devices...specifically my touchpad mouse and my keyboard. I would be typing along and suddenly the text would, in extremely rapid succession, highlight and then disappear. When I was in Word, I could usually recover by hitting the "undo" button. Unfortunately, that didn't work for either Wordpad or any of my browsers. So, I lost a number of posts. In addition to posting here, I am playing with three other blog sites: my Diaryland site, one using Earthlink's blog tool and one using Opera's Journal tool. The latter two are total experiments which, more than likely, will not last. The Diaryland site has been around, but inactive, for longer than this site.

In addition to the blog sites, I have two works of fiction (I hesitate to call them novels yet) which are in process. Now, I had started writing these a long, long, long time ago, and had sorta lost focus and (let's say it) abandoned them for many years. However, last fall I started writing again and it felt good for awhile. Then came the Holidays and that part of my life got put on hold again. Now I am finding it hard to get them started again. Also, I have a business plan I am supposed to be resurrecting. I have a deadline of a week from tomorrow and I have not written a word or done any editing in over three weeks. This is not good.

The final brick in the dam has to be my time. My problem is that I don't have very much free time right now. I'm still providing daycare for the granddaughter, and she, as she fast approaches her 2nd birthday next week, is demanding more and more of my time/attention during the day. That has greatly limited my time available for writing (and everything else I am actually interested in). Plus now work at the bookstore is more demanding also. When I get home from work three nights a week at 11:45pm, I am pretty well fried. I decompress watching a movie on the tube (usually) and then head off to bed at about 2am. I have tried to use that time for writing, but I find it excruciatingly difficult. My creative abilities seem to be at an unusually low ebb at that time after a shift behind the cashline. (I am coming to hate being a head cashier...I am promised a return to the book floor within the next 45 days, and I can hardly wait!)

So, that is why some of my better posts for this space haven't shown up for the last few weeks. If I can pull myself together a little bit, I'll try to redo a couple of (IMHO) really good posts. Time will tell, eh? And now, gentle reader(s), I have to bundle myself up to go scrape frozen, crystalline water off the driveway and walkways. It snowed about 4 inches or so last night. It is now about 12 F outside, and I'm going out to shovel snow. Gah!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005