NONFUNCTIONAL CALENDAR

Here is my thought for today:

Ever feel like inventing something – but not wanting to be famous or anything like that – the invention would have to be something completely useless or nonfunctional.  Here’s a thought – Perhaps we could invent a nonfunctional calendar. I know exactly what is going through your mind – what do I mean by nonfunctional?  Well, each month would have 40 days instead of the usual 30 or 31; with that thought in mind each week would have 10 days. Oh, and let’s not list any of the days of the week, you know like Monday, Tuesday and so forth and so on. And for pictures – instead of great landscape scenes or for us guys – pictures of babes in bathing suits – we could use photos of random objects – you know like a rusty old wheelbarrow or a pile of broken concrete blocks. Something like this:

 

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38	39	40

By now you must be thinking – is he well? To respond to that allow me to leave you with a quote by the late and great Robin Williams, who said:

“You’re only given a little spark of madness; you mustn’t lose it.”

I try real hard not to lose my little spark of madness.

On a different note, due to the holidays and all we have on our plates for the balance of 2017, this will be my last post for the year. Here is wishing all my fellow bloggers –

A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Safe, and Healthy New Year!

Be back in 2018.

 

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What is a Drabble?

 

Over the summer I had two goals as they related to my writing – First was to make it a point to write 200 words a day and save same for possible editing at a later date to incorporate into yet another book I would like to write.

Another goal I had was to begin dabbling in “drabbles.”

A drabble is a short work of fiction of around one hundred words in length. The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author’s ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.

With that thought in mind, I thought I would share one of my drabbles here on this site which will do two things:

Enable me to meet my goal of posting once a week here on my Word Press account while at the same time introducing you all to Drabbles.

Here is one drabble I wrote while on vacation over the summer:

“It is 4:30 am in the morning. Shortly I will be done with my paper route and off on a fishing trip. I climb the steps to the entrance of the apartment building.  I enter the building to drop three papers for the customers that live there. He is just standing there at attention – a soldier in full uniform – he doesn’t say a word – it’s almost as though he is dead. I drop the papers and run the rest of my route. Upon arriving home, I waken my mother and ask her a question – “Mom, have my hair turned white?”

Hope you enjoyed this little piece of nonsense!  Until next time!

What is a Back Burner?

Many people say: “those who think they are doing good by ‘multi-tasking’ are really only doing many jobs or projects at one time – but not necessarily to the best of their ability.”

I used to multi-task and to some extent still do more than one thing at a time like glance over something I want to read while also watching a TV show. But when I want to truly occupy my mind, while doing a project around the house, I will allow a different project I am thinking about to mull around in the “back burner” of my mind. The back burner of our minds operates like the stove in our kitchen once the meal is prepared but not quite ready to serve. We move the pot to the back burner to simmer allowing all the ingredients to mix, blend, and simmer creating this wonderful tasty meal for others to enjoy.

Back burners operate like a slow cooker – you toss in various ingredients, mix them up, and then walk away from them for several hours. The less times you open the pot to check on how they are doing – the better the meal will taste once done.

Many times, when I have problems that need solving and aren’t so earth-shattering that they need to be attended to immediately, I toss the idea around in the back of my head – usually subconsciously – allowing the problem to simmer such as the meal in the crockpot. We may not know it, but our back burner is always there ready to help us in situations like this.  While we are scurrying around doing our daily tasks, this back burner – while quieter and softer than our everyday mind – is intelligently thinking of ways to solve the problem(s) we have no immediate answer for.

Taking things to task this way enables our brain to be utilized both while working on current projects and silently thinking about the problems we want to tackle a day, week, or month down the road. It is not meant to be used to procrastinate though. When we toss the problem onto our back burner – it is to obtain – at a later date – a solution to the problem. Not only can this method assist in solving many problems, it should also reduce the stress in  one’s life.