from writing to felines

02 May 2002
10:26 pm

Enough of those odd little musings. Tonight's storms have done their damage and moved on, and we had nothing this time except a lot of wind and more rain. Even skittish Edmund slept through it, so it definitely was one of the weaker storms we've had this week.

I've been toying with the idea of giving myself a bit of a mini-vacation from posting here for a few days. I know that won't happen, though; the best way to guarantee that something entry-worthy will happen tomorrow is for me to definitively announce tonight that I want to take a few days off. So consider this an officially wishy-washy statement of saying something like this:"I really want to take a day or two off from this, really I do, I swear, but I know that by saying anything to you that I've totally jinxed things."

I got curious just now and ran some stats on April's entries. I knew that I'd been writing more consistently than I had in quite some time, and the statistics generally bear that out. A raw average (total words divided by total days) came out at around 540 words/day. A more accurate average (total words / actual days written) came in at around 640 words/day.

Seems like I've had something to say lately. Must be the stormy spring air.

I've been trying to figure out how best to buckle myself down into a writing schedule. I need to just set one and be done with it, but routines are notoriously difficult beasts to get established. 'Cat.net entries don't take nearly as long to write as they once did (the words seem to be stringing themselves together a lot more easily these days) and I'd be interested to see what I could come up with in a month of concerted effort.

Sadly enough, next week probably isn't going to be the week to start. Jeff is about to take a long-overdue (and well-earned) week of vacation, and I expect that my routine will be thoroughly topsy-turvy next week. Should be nice, though. I'd kidnap him for a day trip somewhere in the new car, but it's rather difficult to kidnap your spouse when you've announced your intentions on your website (which, naturally, he reads).

Nah. No kidnapping. Perhaps I'll just force him to sleep in every day and then hand him the Buffy tapes (season 2) whenever he rolls out of bed.

Realistically, Tenzing will still wake him up in the dark hours of the morning, and Jeff will watch the episodes when he gets around to it.

With that, I fear I've exhausted all the domesticat news that's fit for print (and, admittedly, a bit that isn't). I have a cat that's clamoring for attention, and another one that wouldn't mind if he got his head scratched a bit, so perhaps I should shift my attention from writing to felines.

If we don't encounter each other again before then, have a lovely weekend!

Comments

Erica
03 May 2002
7:04 am

Hm my spouse doesn't read my journal. He avoids it on purpose, as do a few of my friends. Have a good weekend!

domesticat
03 May 2002
8:51 am

My apologies—I suspect this is going to turn into an entry addendum instead of a comment... In the journaling world, I think I'm a bit of an oddity. Domesticat.net was always geared toward friends—the people I knew in person. Not to some unknown, unseen 'audience.' At first it was a bit of a joke, something goofy to poke around with in the presence of my friends. Over time, it changed. First it became an outlet, and later, it became an outlet I cared about very much. Along the way, the readership grew. Suddenly it wasn't just my friends; it was their friends—some of whom later became my friends (hi, Geof!). It was their friends and family. It was something that grew by word-of-mouth: "Hey, did you read what she said on..." I think the eeriest moment came about two months ago, when I learned that the older brother of an old, old friend of mine had been reading cat.net for some time. I'd always wished I'd had the chance to get to know him, but the combination of him being 1) just as frightfully intelligent as his brother [my friend] and 2) being the Older Brother[tm] of my friend meant that I'd been completely tongue-tied around him since I was oh, thirteen or so. That particular connection was something of a revelation. It reminded me of why I write. Words are tiny, inanimate things, but when assembled with care, they connect people. Realizing that through words, I'd managed to connect with someone whom I never would have had the courage to approach, both surprised and awed me. The short version: everybody reads cat.net, both family and friends. (Sometimes to my benefit, sometimes...not.) Sam said to me earlier this week that I managed to make it sound like I was writing for a small group of people. As the readership has grown (my refrain: "Who are you people?!?") I've tried to maintain that feeling of intimacy and friendship through words. That, and the length of my pieces, means that I'm never going to be the "swank hot publishing site of the month." I'm fine with that. What I like is the fact that people come away from my writing with the feeling that they've not just read some article on a website, but they've heard from a person. ...because that's what it is.

gfmorris
03 May 2002
9:16 am

Hi, Amy. Is this the point where I bop Brad for never having finished his part of the Amy-bio, so we can see how people that have gotten to know you through the years react to the nuttiness that is being one of your friends? :D

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