Joyously Prolific

Orchids

I'm well into Paid in Gold and Blood. The rewrite from scratch is going along very well -- about 7,000 words so far. Mirrors is also going nicely. I've added several new pieces to that story, including a wonderful new scene last night that I really enjoyed writing.

What I haven't done is gotten my submissions out the door yet. I think I have three ready to go -- all of them mail submissions, too. If I can get them out in the next couple days I'll feel a lot better.

Other than that, I'm getting my office sorted out nicely. The upload ability is still down for my Journal, but I add to it every day as though it will actually post. I am sorting though a few hundred zoo pictures that I never looked at from last January. I plan to redo my zoo site again, and this time with some information on some of the animals. I've already written about 2000 words on it. I'm going to have to skip most of the fish for now until I can get back to the zoo and get some IDs on them. And telling one tiger from another is kind of difficult, too. I know there are ways to do it, but I'm going to have to do some far more serious study before I can tell.

Good thing I love to learn this stuff.

And now for an odd bit of a rant.

I've noticed a pernicious problem lately in people I know, both on line and off. Someone makes a choice, it doesn't work -- and rather than stand up and admit that they had any control whatsoever in their own lives, they'll harp on and on about how someone else is at fault for a failure, as though they were never involved at all. I'm not sure when we became a nation of 'it's someone else's fault' cry babies, but I sure see a lot of it these days. Those people will jump up with a cry about how they have been ruined by parents, spouses, children, neighbors, teachers, bosses -- but rarely do I see someone say 'I made a choice and it didn't work out.' And far fewer times do I see any of them say 'well, that's past time to move on.'

I'm not talking about cases where malicious harm was purposely done to another. There's more than enough of that as well. But I do see people refusing to acknowledge their own choices in life -- and using that as an excuse not to do anything to change as well. They're wounded. They're injured in the soul, and it's all someone else's fault.

I find this especially interesting in writers, who wave their 'poor me banner' like some kind of writing crutch so that everyone can see they have a problem, and it's not their fault. They can't write, they can't write what they want, they can't write well enough -- whatever they've decided they can't do, it is the fault of parents, teachers, spouses and old friends.

It's often something that happened far in the past and has scared them forever. And it's true. As long as they use it as a crutch so that they don't have to work any harder, it will be with them forever.

Sometimes it's hard to put aside those crutches and accept that everyone of us has some control over our lives, and that if we make mistakes it's all right to admit it. And admitting to ourselves means that we have the control to move on as well. As long as you tie your mistakes to someone else's life, you're never going to have control over your own.

End of Rant.