AMAZING, Amazing or amazing?

This morning I posted my 15th blog post for July but it seems to have disappeared. Nothing I have done has allowed me to figure out where it went. The interwebz swallowed it, I guess. I will now re-write, though I was really quite happy with it the way that it was. #frown

A couple weeks ago my laptop died. You might remember this tragedy from my post Dancing in the Sprinklers and my subsequent posts meticulously created on my smart phone. Since last week was full of family commitments, I am just not getting around to setting up the awesome desktop that my friend Moira has lent me. I didn't have a keyboard, but bought a bargain basement Microsoft one from Office Max even though the computer itself is a Mac. It connects by USB port, I rolled the dice, figuring it'd probably still work and yep, it sure does. The only minor snag is that I have to remember to use the Windows button to copy/cut/paste instead of the Control key, but I'm getting the hang of it.

The monitor she lent me is Huge. I don't have a ruler handy but I'm guessing it's about 22-24 inches. The screen on my laptop was 15. It also has beautiful high definition picture quality but since I have it sitting laptop distance (on a tv tray... soooo classy) away instead of across a desk, I had to turn the brightness down to 30% so my eyes stop feeling like they're going to burn out of my skull.

While all of the technology seems to be cooperating now, this has me pondering deeper spiritual thoughts. How many times has the Universe sent me something AMAZING but I was only prepared/had space for something Amazing or amazing and thus had to reduce the quality of the gift to something I could actually work with, cutting off its vast potential so it could meet me where I was at?

Lately, thanks to the 31 day blog challenge that I'm participating in, I've been reading a lot of great posts from writers who have actually... *gasp* completed books. It has occurred to me that while I studied English Literature and took numerous creative writing classes, I've never actually learned anything about writing a novel. I've been stalled out at Chapter 3 for longer than I care to admit.

The analogy that comes to mind is that I've been trained for sprinting (short stories) and have suddenly gotten this bright idea into my head to complete a marathon. I'm not even a 5K in and I'm winded and realizing that my creative endurance needs to be built. It's time to get some education to learn how to use this nifty gift of a story idea with which the Universe has blessed me.

It is time for novel bootcamp. I'm going to throw my lazy legs of creativity on a treadmill and resist the urge to turn the speed up to 15mph just to watch myself fall and go sliding off (though the mental picture Is pretty funny). With gentleness and ease I am going to become Boy Scout ready for this opportunity and mute the voice that says that I have no business outside of the kiddie pool. Yes, I realize that I mixed my fitness analogies and No, I'm not saying that short stories are Easy. A well written one can be pretty challenging since you don't have as much room to say what you want to say. I'm just saying that I'm stepping outside of my comfort zone and it feels a lot like the first time I ventured into the deep end of the pool without floaties. I'd had swimming lessons. I was pretty sure I knew what I was doing and yet I was still afraid that a shark was going to come up and swallow me whole. Yes, I was an imaginative little kid, even if my understanding of marine biology was a little skewed.

What opportunities are whispering to your spirit? Feel free to share them with me and we can throw eggs at each other. While that doesn't sound good at all, it actually means to encourage one another. When I was recruiting friends to come watch me participate in a sprint triathlon a friend agreed to attend and said that she would "egg me on" by throwing eggs at me. I suggested that perhaps her view of encouragement was a little warped to which she used one of my own lines on me. "Yes, but my version is funnier." So, I've adopted this wacky phrase, because she's right. It Is funny.