peer pressure as a way of life

I promised myself that I would finish my book this week.  With work and a party tomorrow and work and a wedding Saturday, it appears that I will have, once again, broken a promise to myself.

Part of the problem is that I have trouble getting any serious writing done unless I'm sitting at my desk at home.  Normally I'm not a very location-oriented person; the wife and I have had any number of discussions where she tries to get me to be interested in decor or furnishings, and it just doesn't happen.  It's place, not people, so it's really hard for me to care.  But there's something about the solitude and joy of sitting at the center of my carefully constructed world that unlocks my writing potential.  Well, my endurance potential, anyway; actual inspiration can strike at any time, and I just have to hope that I'm ready to record it.

(disclaimer:  "actual" inspiration may or may not actually be worth recording)

It's not as though I didn't have time to work on the book earlier in the week.  But I have a variety of competing demands on my time, and it's difficult for me to prioritize what I feel like doing.  So often I have friends clamoring for me to play this game, watch this show, read this book...all of which I really want to do.  And I try to do!  Balancing one friend's request over another's usually isn't that much of a challenge, but choosing to focus on my own plans, over someone else's plans for me...that takes a dedication I usually don't have.

Sometimes, I've come to see, you need to take a step back and identify just what it is you want out of a given situation.  How much of it is serving your own goals, and how much someone else's?  A lot of times, the two intersect, and that's wonderful.  But sometimes, you have to go a different way.  Sometimes there are even higher purposes to serve, but that's for the overachievers.  For me, it's a matter of identifying what I'm trying to accomplish, and trying to reorder my life towards that end.

That's all well and vague.  I'm really just trying to justify something that I'm doing tomorrow, something so utterly insignificant that it's not even worth going into detail on it.  Suffice it to say that it involves betrayal, and it'll be a whole lot of fun.

As for my book, there's always next week.  A poem for your troubles.

Shopping Mist

“And pick up lozenges,” she said,

This I must do or I am dead.

But I've no legend to this store,

Nor map, nor list for keeping score

Sure, I've walked these sparkling halls,

But zombie-like, a married thrall

So now’s the first I stand alone

Out of touch, bereft of phone!

With no one to decide my fate,

And hard cash to incinerate—

I’ll try these meats, that cheese, this gum!

And let the Devil take the sum,

I’ll sample fruits of paradise,

And bask before a stack of ice

I’ll linger in the candy aisle,

No one there to chide my smile

It’s the first that I've enjoyed it here,

No frowning face nor cause to fear

So I have my orders wrapped,

And hurry home – just to be slapped;

I've gotten caramel, milk and bread;

And other things she had not said,

I've picked up tea and oranges,

But don’t know what a lozenge is.