Today a friend of mine told me I type so fast that in my messages she can see where autocorrect grabs two of my words and puts them together because I skip a space. I type pretty fast and my fingers are nibble and I think my real issue is just skipping small words like the, a, this, etc. I took typing in high school. Then later I went out to University of Memphis on Saturdays and took a continuing education class on typing. I like to type but I write in cursive more. All my notes and thinking are in cursive and I have to type it in because I can only afford to pay some high school student and they don't know cursive and if they did, they cannot read mine. Laughing.
Hard things. A writer has to deal with a lot of annoying hard things. Like plotting and rewriting, and thinking on character, and yes, typing the manuscript into Word because that is how it's going to be read by editors in New York. And if you develop that habit, you never really escape it. I don't much like tech, but I find lots of it very useful and it makes my life easier. For example, I was one of the first persons in my group of friends to get a computer, and I have been on the Internet forever, it seems like. I never did social media like ordinary people. I was never a content provider because I played on the net or used it to find what I call "grace notes" which were usually quotes, photos, and paintings. All muses to me. Men and women were never my muses. Art is.
Today, I acknowledged what I have never said aloud to other people on social media, that I have lost a lot, that I lost my husband, and he was my tech guy, also my caretaker, and money maker. The so called head of the household that kept it running. Now for nearly a decade that has been my job and for over half that time, it has been hard times for me. I am the head of the household. I am the mother and father now. I am the money person, the one who keeps this little castle of mine going. It is annoying to me, all these chores. I was never a chore person after I left home at 17 years of age. I am not messy in the house. I clean up as I go. It all looks nice. I can decorate. I have that skill and I had some money to do it. Now I feel like I don't want to do those things anymore. They feel too hard. Or maybe just annoying. Or maybe just unnecessary to me. I hardly know or care.
For me, gardening, art, music, writing, painting are my things. I am guessing the rest could fall down or rot or whatever. Come December 17th my husband will be dead a decade. Why does it feel like a few months ago at times? Why don't I marry again? Maybe because it took a lot for me to marry at all, and then I had three boys and the last thing I think about is marrying again. What good would that do me? None. But without Johnny, it feels like hard times. I miss him. Just like I miss my parents, and my best friends, all of the latter died way too young, one was 15, one 31, one in her late 40s. My mother outlived her husband and all her six siblings and she was next to the oldest. I wonder if she thought it was hard to deal with all that. She never really complained and maybe tonight is the only time I will ever complain and this post is really to remind me that I did.
Loss is painful. Work is often a hard thing, too.
I am not depressed, just what someone would call mild melancholy. I have been ill with Covid and it was really hard at times. I still am dealing with post Covid things. I lost a book yesterday and went though 500 books to find it. I am tired. I have a lot of work to do this winter. I am sure to bounce back. I don't know how to stop things very well. I will probably start decorating for Christmas and forget I ever wrote this after it passes in the feed. The hard times will pass momentarily as they always do.
But right now, everything is hard to do. Everything. Especially typing.
