If you save the dishes until later because the now of dish washing is a drag, the later of dish washing will be even worse because you will be rushing to get them done half an hour before your friends arrive at the door and you want those friends to think you are not the sort of person who leaves the dishes undone. So that later will be all stressed and anticipating the future stress, you make now less fun because you’d rather be vegetating to an old “Doctor Who” episode than washing dishes. This whole business of living in the moment is fraught.
-
Writing badly is easy. You just open up the mental spigot and words flow out of your fingertips and pretty soon you’ve filled a bunch of pages.
Writing well is hard. You open up the mental spigot and words flow out of your fingertips and pretty soon you’ve filled a bunch of pages and then a couple of days later you re-read those pages and find two paragraphs worth keeping or two fine sentences worth sharing or the germ of an idea worth developing.
And if, heaven forfend, you are trying to craft a novel, then there should have been time on the front end where all you did was ponder plot and story and character, so that when you do sit down to begin writing, the architecture can sustain and direct the sentences and paragraphs poring out of your fingers.
When I see people promoting the idea that a novel can be written in 30 days, I think to myself, yes, of course, you can open up the spigot and the words will surely flow. But a brain dump is not a work of art.
All of which is my way of reminding myself to be patient. I can’t push this river.
-
Putting rocks in a glass box. Putting plants and water in the glass box. Shining light in the glass box. Sucking out toxins and adding in carbon dioxide. Introducing fish.Takashi Amano, you did this to me. Ever since I saw your stunning natural waterscapes, I have been mesmerized. I don’t know what it touches in me exactly, but I’m so delighted to be able to play with these elements.
Here’s my first attempt at a nature aquarium on a large scale. I set it up over the weekend. It’ll be a couple of weeks before the filter system is cycled to the point where it’s safe for fish. In the meantime, I can’t figure out why staring at plants and rocks in water is more compelling than television.
Here’s the list of gear: 40 gallon ADA rimless aquarium, Eheim classic 250 filter, Aquatic Life 30-inch T5 lights, Archaea Pro co2 regulator that can handle a variety of tanks.
Here are the plants: hemianthus callitrichoides, glossostigma elatinoides, selaginella wildenowii, echinodorus amazonicus, anubia congensis, dracaena sanderiana, and, of course, Java ferns.
Aquarium geek and proud.
