Patti O'Shea's Blog

I’ve lived in the land of oblivion so long, I guess you could call it my hometown.

Things just don’t occur to me that occur to other people. At least until someone says something and then I have a big “duh!” moment. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to with one person and then recounted the conversation to someone else later only to have that second person ask questions I have no answer to. Why? Because the most basic of queries just don’t occur to me until someone else mentions them.

The oblivion covers many areas. Writers are supposed be observant, right? Me? Not so much. In college, I remember saying to my roomie that I thought a guy and a gal on our dorm floor liked each other. Yeah, very late to that party since they’d already been dating for a while. I’d like to chalk this up to youth, but unfortunately I’m still slow on the uptake. I pretty much need to be hit over the head.

What got me thinking about this is a conversation on one of my loops where the authors were talking about promoting each others’ releases on Twitter. This was another “duh!” moment for me. Why wasn’t I retweeting when authors made announcements about their new books? I was congratulating them, but not resending the message. It wasn’t deliberate. It was my obliviousness at work again. I’m going to try to be better now that I have a clue. Of course, retweeting when I’m at the Evil Day Job (EDJ) is difficult, but I’m going to try to mark the post as a favorite and retweet when I get home.

More oblivion about asking people to guest blog over here. I guess I figured that other writers wouldn’t be interested, but I should have thought about asking, right? I did unjam my brain enough to invite one person (thanks, Carolyn!), but that trickle didn’t penetrate my thick head enough to get that I should be asking others. This goes under the heading #friendfail. Maybe the other authors wouldn’t have time or maybe they really wouldn’t be interested, but I should at least think to ask. I’m going to try and be better here, too.

I don’t know what predisposed me to reside in the land of oblivion. Maybe it’s because I was such a dork when I was in school and I escaped into my fictional world (I had stories in my head even then) to avoid the pain of the real one. Maybe I’m missing the gene that makes things everyone else thinks of invisible to me. Maybe it’s something else all together, but I’m going to attempt to improve across the board.

This is going to be a work in progress, of course, because my obliviousness is dense enough that it’s going to take concerted effort over a long period of time to overcome it, but at least I finally realize I have a problem.

It’s snowing here today. (I promise this post will not be about the weather!) It’s the slow-falling, heavy snow that we usually get in March. I don’t like snow, I never will, but today there was a quiet beauty to the landscape.

It’s the kind of day where I’d love to be at home. If I had a fireplace, I’d like a small fire going and a cup of cocoa. As much as I love coffee, today is a cocoa day. It’s a day for quiet relaxation, a day to enjoy the softer moments of life.

Those days, the ones where we can just sit and stare out the window at the weather, seem few and far between. Life has become go-go-go all the time. For everyone.

It’s especially obvious when I drive. I’ll be doing 75 in a 60 zone and people will tailgate me. My residential street has a speed limit of 25mph, but people zoom by at 40. Never mind that there are small children, pets, and senior citizens who live on the road.

Why do people try to cram in more and more stuff each day? I know that I’m as guilty as the next person, although I’ve streamlined to the point where the stuff that I’m trying to do is writing or promotion related in some way. I’ve jettisoned other hobbies, other interests all to find more time to keep up with my second job. That extra time has remained elusive.

Normally, driving in weather like this leaves me stressed, but I’d left the house early because I didn’t know what the weather was like. I was lucky and very little snow had fallen overnight and I was able to take a nice, leisurely drive in to the Evil Day Job. I’ve started getting off the freeway a ramp earlier, so I even manage to avoid the stress of the backup of people headed in to the EDJ with me. So I arrived today feeling unstressed and relaxed. Wow. What a difference that made in how I feel today!

I tell myself that I should leave the house early every day even if there is no weather event, but I know I won’t. It’s too tempting to stay in bed in the morning–I’m too tired to get up–and then I end up hugely stressed because of the time.

That’s what I guess makes today a special kind of day. The quiet snow falling, my relaxed commute in, a relatively quiet morning so far. It’s all good.

It looks like I’ll be saving the stress for the commute home. The snow has started to really come down fast and furious now and it’s accumulating quickly. It might be one of those white-knuckled, 1:15 minute drives home. Guess I better enjoy this mellow feeling while I can.

It is going to be an exceptionally LONG day today. My RWA chapter has a workshop today that starts at 9am and goes until 4pm, and since our speaker is creativity coach Eric Maisel, I signed up. I’ve heard really, really good things about him and anything that gets–and keeps–the creativity flowing is a good thing.
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So the workshop ends at 4pm and then I have to meet the authors participating in the book signing at 5pm. The Mall of America isn’t far from the hotel at all, but that isn’t going to give me much time to put on makeup and get ready–something I’ll probably end up doing in a public restroom at the hotel. Sigh. It’s just too far for me to drive home and back in the time allotted.

I can’t even tell you how much I am not looking forward to the signing. We’re expected to READ ALOUD from our books for 5 minutes. I printed out the scene I plan to use last night and read it. I discovered it was much longer than 5 minutes, so I looked for a good place to cut and read it again while timing it. Still well over five minutes. I began trimming it in the middle–a sentence here, a paragraph there. It’s like slightly over 5 minutes, but I figure as nervous as I’ll be, I’ll probably be reading so fast, I’ll finish in less time than at home.

Someone please stop me from volunteering to do this next time, okay?

I keep a To Do List, and while I was pushing on deadline for my last book, it was getting long. Really long. I was literally at a point where the question was: What do I have to do today? The thing was nearly a page long.

Yesterday, I crossed the last item off that To Do List!!!

I feel like a huge weight has been lifted. Of course, I have a new list going now, but nothing on it is as difficult as what I had to deal with on the other one. Or maybe it just feels that way because nothing has a real deadline.

Of course, I’m still behind on email.

Random thoughts:

I found a picture of that dress I saw that was perfect for my heroine! Hurrah!

Minnesotans can’t drive. They even did a segment on the news the other night entitled something like why don’t MN drivers know how to merge?

I wish I had an optical mouse at the Evil Day Job (EDJ). I don’t know how many more times this week I can pop out the rubber ball and clean it without losing my mind.

I think the drought in MN has officially ended. We had another hard, pounding rain storm last night. Lots of lightning, too, so I was forced off the computer.

The Cubs magic number is 3, but only because the Brewers lost. Once again, my beloved Chicago Cubs seem determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of almost-certain victory.

I hate synopses.