John Hattaway

So, I went to bed the other night, dead tired. That happens a lot; me being tired and falling into bed, into a restful, or maybe restless, slumber, only to wake eight or ten hours later to start the whole process over again. What happened the other night, that doesn’t happen so frequently, is that I woke up two hours later and stayed awake for about three hours.

What woke me?

Well, for some reason, as I was going to bed, my mind started actively trying to recall if it’d seen different books that I know I’ve purchased, in the past, used, and then kept as reference material for various jobs or … I don’t know … things. Specifically, it began to hover around a Technical Writing manual that I purchased when I took my first job, SENTO now iBahn, a book that cost me, as I recall, quite a lot of money, but one that served me well as I was adapting to a new writing style.

You see, a few years ago I went through my books and culled out the ones I knew held no real meaning for me. I got rid of the books that were pure fluff, were books where I had unintentional duplicates (can anyone say, Green Eggs and Ham?), and books that I felt didn’t fit within the mold I wanted to personally portray on my shelves. I think, of the two or three hundred dollars worth of books (if purchased brand new) I came away with about $75.00. However, at the same time I went from fifteen or sixteen boxes of books to something like ten or twelve.

My mind, for whatever reason it happens latched onto the idea that I’d somehow lost this particular book. It’s not one that I refer to very frequently, I can’t honestly say that I see the book when I look at the books on that particular shelf. The book is more of a token of learning rather than a reference I would actively pursue; but it is a reference that I can use when the need arises. And the need cold arise, again, in the near future.

Anywho, I woke up two hours after going to bed and lay in bed wondering about the book and other things. The other things aren’t important in this piece, but the book is. I lost my copy of Harry Potter and the Goblin of Fire which has really bugged me for a long time. I’d thought I’d lost one or two other books, but the outcome is that I’ve found or recovered the other books and still haven’t located my copy of Harry Potter IV. It’s frustrating to me.

At one point I thought I’d left it in Cortez, CO. But no amount of searching, down that way, has turned up anything. At another time I thought I’d shoved it in an odd box or crate and, again, nothing when I’ve gone through my belongings. Just about the only thing that is left that I haven’t gone through, yet, are the kitchen materials and I can’t fathom my putting a book in with a cast iron skillet. The two just don’t seem to work together in packing, if ya know what I mean. I mean, cast iron would be hard on paper and wood and books are pretty much paper, so….

Anyway, I finally pulled myself out of bed when I realized I was not going to go back to sleep, I turned on my light, and I glanced at that bookshelf only to see that, sure enough, the book I’d been thinking about was sitting right where it belonged, along with a dozen or so other books on the same, or similar subject.

I thought, at that point, that it would be easy to go back to bed, lie down, close my eyes, and fall back to sleep. Yeah! That didn’t happen. Instead I went downstairs, found my copy of James Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, and began reading the final section I had to read for class the next day. Even that didn’t bore me to sleep – though it was rather boring, and so I then did a few things around the house, turned on the T.V. and surfed around until I located something that didn’t offend me to watch, and finally ended up with That 70’s Show which I think is mostly funny, but kind obnoxious depending on the season being shown.

On a said note, Jack said, once, that you have to think, “Kelso,” when dealing with Justin and everything would make sense. At the time that was true. I don’t really deal with Justin a whole lot anymore, and Jack’s statement was several years ago, so, can’t really say that I have any opinion on the matter one way or the other.

However, instead of sleeping or reading or sleeping I turned on my computer, which is not something I do a whole lot anymore except to write or research or to do school work, which is kind of frequently but not as frequent as it might’ve been once upon a September. At that point I opened the My Documents folder and started going through the documents. There was a point to what I was doing… specifically grabbing documents that I thought fell in line with a series of personal vignettes I want to write and then shove them all into a central location so that I could organize and write at some future date. Well, it’s rewrite in some areas, finish writing in others, and just plain write for a whole list of things that I’m not really certain I want to be working on. But the items that got shunted into a new folder included some poetry, a play I’d started writing in New Hampshire, and some personal essay’s as well as topics that follow a mental, central theme.

At that point, after something like two or three hours had passed and I’d deleted a lot of things that no longer mattered to me, I discovered that I was tired and could go to bed. The real problem came the next morning when my alarm (on my phone) had to go off for about two hours before I finally dragged myself out of bed and into the shower and out the door for school and work and … well, whatever else there is in my life.

There are some central themes that are running through my mind, and have been, for a few weeks now. One of them is what I want to accomplish, financially, personally, and professionally, out of life. Another is what kind of a life I want my future children to lead when I am no longer around and how I think, at this point, I want to set up my financial affairs. These are weird thoughts, to me, as I contemplate my current situation: not dating, in school, poor as a church mouse, etc., etc., and etc.

However, for some reason some of these thoughts have really become dominant in my mind especially as I think about a tertiary writing project that I am still unsure of writing. Yes, I started the project, but I start a lot of projects… the problem in this case is who this project can ultimately affect.

Anyway, I won’t talk about that. Needful to say, that night seemed to solidify some things in my mind and as I don’t believe in coincidences and I am suddenly reminded of something I heard the other day, e.g. when you receive inspiration you should act upon it within two weeks or it will leave you (I don’t know about this… per say), I believe that it may be time to at least pursue the idea, pursue other plans I have, and see where it lands me.

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This entry was posted by smokingpen on Thursday, April 6th, 2006 at 11:10 am and is filed under On Writing Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.