Locked out of laptop, and I’m not letting it do a thing to me today.  Yesterday, monstrous button device essentially and elementally ruined my whole day.  What does a writer, a real writer and thinker, need to be so dependent on a device for?  Can’t think of a single reason.  So, I type on the laptop but under a “Guest” profile.  Like being a guest in my own home.  This is teaching the writing father something…  To be patient, to be versatile, to break dependency.  If a journalist lost their notebook, would they stop writing?  NO.  Even if some nearing deadline’s piece was in the borders of those pages, they’d keep writing.  So I keep writing.  Not stopping.  For anything.  Including this devilish device.

And, I have what I’m assuming’s a cold of some shape or specimen.  But not even that will slow me.  I have to keep writing and keep my articles in their stream of successful succession.  It would be easy for someone, I can just see it now (and this applies to me), to just give up, get into a woe-is-me roll and stop.  Just pout while at work, not get a thing done and waste all the seconds and clock movements of their day.  No I’m going to keep going.  And writing fathers or any kind of working father, mothers too, for that matter have no excuse but to keep working, through everything.  I ruminate further and look outside, the rain over the vineyard, how it refuses to stop (and I know I’ve given this analogy before but it’s the only one I can think of at the moment).  Just how I need to be.  Little sleep last night with son battling some kind of stomach bug, and little sleep the night before with him as well.  But yesterday I let that coupled with the laptop skirmish sharpen and soil my pervading disposition through the day.  But not today.

Just went for a walk, over to other building to just be in the air, feel rain lightly assuring the top of my head, breathing deep so some of those little cloud touches find their way to my lungs, become a part of a more-motivated Me today.  And now back at my desk, and better.  Much better.  Better than yesterday, better once the fresh coffee’s in my tumbler.  And on with the day, this writing father.  If this is what’s to happen when locked out of my “profile” or whatever on this laptop then it can have the key.  I don’t want to be let in again, ever.  This is very tangibly a do-over for the writing daddy.   This removal from the laptop is an eternizing of my self, or understanding and awareness of self.  I’m better because of this.  A sort of xmas present from the universe, or the Story itself.

Just a bit after 09:00, and I’m MORE than inviting of this day.  “Bring it on!” I yell in my head.  Battlecry of an exhausted but renewed papa-writer, or “papablogga” as my friends call me.  The lesson in this is more of a reminder.  That I don’t need much.  And an occasional challenge builds the Story and the main character in this story, Me.  Approaching the bottom of this page I don’t want it to end.  I don’t want anything in this sitting to end.  I don’t want to be let back into my.. whatever…  I don’t want this running nose and scratchy throat to dissipate.  I don’t want 5 o’clock to come around and have to leave, have to drive home, much I want to see the kids, especially Jack.  This is what real writers do.  What writing fathers do.  We write anyway.  Throw something at us, really.  We’ll laugh.  We’ll keep writing.  We’ll laugh whilst we type or scribble and just get on with our days.  Make all our days ours, because they are very much OURS.  WE have kids to support, and like everyone else we only have one audition in this play.  Life.  Life with its cruel-yet-encouraging brevity.  The devices are trivial, best.  What’s integral and with true imperative gravity is our mood, our attitude.  With all candor, I surrendered yesterday.  And I didn’t have to.  I should have forced myself to be more resilient and resourceful.  More or a writer.  But, I have today.  Today erases and negates yester’.

Sip1…  New chapter, surely.  Not sure what to say next other than I’m immeasurably favored today.  In my battle against the day—  You know what, I shouldn’t look at it that way.  And neither should you, any of you, whether a writing dad or not.  Again, one audition—  No, this is the performance, how your role commands the stage, what character you offer the world, how you want your story to be read.  As I suggested to students in both classes last week, “Fire never stops.” Be fire.  Don’t see stopping or slowing as an option.  ‘Cause, you’re on.  On stage.  The stage is your home.  Don’t settle for being just a guest.

(12/23/16)