Old Decathlon Olympics Journal

May 4 entry: I have found a theme...

May 4th, 2004

Well, last night at 11:00 pm central standard time I was sound asleep. This is important due to the fact that I wanted to and intended to participate in the Scavenger Hunt that is one of 10 Writing Decathlon events. The Scavenger Hunt was scheduled to start at 11:00 pm Writing.Com time, and I am still not sure what time that is. The point is I missed it.

Yesterday also turned out to be a reading day. It is not a truly independent choice for me – reading days just happen. So I also did not get my 500 Writing Decathlon words written and entered into this journal. I have not yet been able to work on the Short Story Slam event topic; nor have I worked on the Writer’s Cramp prompt. The reason I am writing about this is because I woke up this morning with 2 simple choices: Get busy and make up the work that I did not get to yesterday, or shuck it all, and quit. Well, you are reading this because I decided to get busy and make up my work. It is too late for the Scavenger Hunt, but there are still 9 other events yet to come. With any luck I should be able to get something written for the Writer’s Cramp and the Short Story Slam.

Today is going to be filled with real life distractions. I can only do the best that I can do. I am not racing against any one particular field of other participants. I entered the Writing Decathlon for myself, and myself only. Actually, I kind of consider this like a training session for the up and coming NanoWriMo Challenge coming in September, which requires 50,000 words in a month. Last year I failed miserably, but last year was the first year I had ever heard of NanoWriMo, so I have not beat myself up to badly about my own lack of endurance. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, yet here I am early in the year planning on entering that contest again. What a glutton for punishment I am.

As I said in the May 3rd entry that I posted late, yesterday was a reading day. I discovered some amazing journals written by some even more amazing people on Writing.Com. The one thing that I realized in the course of my reading is that the people who have written these journals have an uncanny ability to stick to something that they have started. I have found that my life cannot be compared to a whole, seamless, woven, intertwining thread that produces a finished blanket. No, I view my life in segments. Chopped up, chewed up fragments that end up not being a complete anything. Maybe I am more like a quilt, a collection of many different kinds of material, gathered over a random period of time, and sewn together by many different types and colors of thread. I think that the term for that kind of quilt is “A Crazy Quilt”, and that description is as accurate a description of my time on this little piece of dirt as any that I can think of.

And now, after only 4 days of entries, I think that I may have just stumbled across a theme or direction for this journal to take. No specific title yet, but definitely a theme. I will start putting the pieces in place with words replacing thread; the fragmented sections of my life can be recreated in paragraph form. The daily entries will be the building blocks for the crazy quilt of my life. Oh yes, I think that I have found a theme.