When I was in my early teens, I had a summer job babysitting a pair of kids in the neighborhood. They were, frankly, not my cup of tea. They weren't bad kids, really. They were just kind of kids. Messy, frustrating, opinionated little beings who probably thought I wasn't their cup of tea, either.
But that's not really the point of this. The bigger point is what I chose to do with my money. My first summer, I bought a wristwatch. Citizen Quartz watch with a soft leather strap. It was very classic, very nerdy, and it very much met its end when I was pushed into a swimming pool while wearing it, maybe a year or so later.
The second (and final) year of this babysitting gig, the summer before my 8th grade year, I spent the big bucks and bought myself an electric typewriter. It was 1988, and I couldn't afford a computer - which, even if I could - to what end?
But I could afford a Smith Corona, and that's what I bought. It had an LED readout so that you could type a sentence or two and proofread it before you printed it. So, that was good. It also had an effective correction key. And was it loud? Was it ever!!!
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| It looked more or less like this, though I remember it being way bigger. |
I loved that typewriter. I wrote some papers with it, but my favorite thing to do was write sentences. Just sentences. Ridiculous sentences.
I can't remember one verbatim, but things like:
The Hungarian Countess met her daughter's yoga teacher at the DMV, and they decided to get pastries afterwards.
I hadn't done that in awhile, but the other night, I started thinking about that, and how much I enjoyed it. I also harkened back to something I heard online - advice that one celeb had gotten from another celeb, that basically breaks down to this. If there's something you believe about yourself, or something you aspire to be in life, you need to do one thing each day that affirms your belief or aspiration. If you want to be a painter, paint. If you want to lose weight, eat fewer calories. If you want to make friends, leave the house.
I am also reminded of one of the many self-help books I read in my 20s, that said, "You can have anything you want, but you can't have everything you want." Basically, that you may have two things you claim to want but they can't both be true. Say for example you want to take a lavish vacation, but you're also trying to not spend money this year. Well, one of those won't exist in a world with the other. So... you have to hone in on what you want.
I am, fundamentally, a writer. I don't know what I want to write. A book, probably. Something humorous. My life isn't nearly Sedaris-y enough to write essays that would resonate with folks. So humorous fiction?
And one of the things I can do every day is write a few ridiculous sentences. Like this, that I wrote yesterday:
Patricia slid her key in the lock to open her front door and
sighed. It was one thing to play “The
Floor is Lava”, but totally different when the floor was actually lava.
Keep doing what makes you, you.
ae
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