Lost an Idea

Occasionally I've mentioned on this blog, and on my other blog, that ideas for writing topics/books run through my head all the time. I'll be driving to work, and the sky will inspire a haiku. I'll be driving home in the evening and something that happened during the day will come to mind, and I'll realize I could make an article out of that, or a short story, or at least a chapter in The Gutter Chronicles. Or any of these types of ideas could come to me while on my noon or evening walks.

I don't own a mobile recording device. My cell phone is definitely not smart. So what I have to do, to capture those ideas for later development, is write them down as soon as I'm at a place to do so. When I'm driving, I don't pull a scrap of paper from my folder and scribble, as that wouldn't be safe, so I have to wait until I reach my destination. If I'm walking, and I suppose when I'm driving too, I'll try to repeat the idea over and over until I hopefully remember it by the time I reach pen and paper.

So I get there, I grab some piece of paper, and write the idea. Hopefully the paper I select isn't a random scrap, but a proper sheet that will go in a proper file and then be retrievable. Hopefully I'll actually take the paper and put it in a file somewhere. Hopefully some day I go back to that file, see the sheet, recognize what is on it, and remember what the idea was conveyed in however many words I used to record the idea for future action.

Alas, it doesn't always work that way. By the time I reach home, office, or other destination I forget that I had something to write down. Or I write down a few words in haste on an envelope that later goes in the recycling bag without a second look. Or the paper sits on a table somewhere, unfiled. Or I find the paper at some point and the words on the page seem like nonsense, and I don't recall why I wrote what I did. Or I typed the idea on the computer, and it's somewhere in some folder on some drive on some computer, never to be brought to mind again. Or maybe, just maybe, it is in a notebook or hanging file, but I never go to look for it again.

I struggle with this blog, and finding things to write. I considered giving it up, but just can't. The problem is a mix of finding time to write and ideas to write about. My other blog, about my writing life and writings, is a little easier. I finally decided that I'll write on this blog twice a week, and twice a week on the other. My schedule is this.

Sunday: this blog, a topic about Christianity
Tuesday: other blog, writing related
Thursday: this blog, a general topic
Friday: other blog, writing related

So far I haven't quite reached that ideal. Yesterday was my day for writing this post, but I didn't make it. I spent my evening reconciling my budget spreadsheet with my health savings account expenses for the last two years, something I didn't realize I'd been missing. When that was done (it only took a half hour), I spent an hour building the table of contents for my soon to be published non-fiction, public domain republishing book, as well as cleaning up the file to eliminate e-book unfriendly items. That's almost done, I'm happy to report. A little time tonight, maybe not more than 30 minutes, and it will be publishing ready. At noon I should have worked on the blog, but we had a training class then that I attended. Yesterday morning before work I should have worked on it, but I paid a bill and did some reading and research. The time left me, and I never wrote the post.

But one reason I didn't write it was because I had lost my idea. Sometime, about a week ago, I wrote out what I'd be writing my blog posts on for the next two weeks, barring new ideas that would pop up. It was a good list, and it including something I would write for yesterday's post. Alas, I can't find the paper. Did I stick it in the folder I carry back and forth from home to work? I can't find it in there. Did I write it on a pad at work, or at home? Was it a pad, or was it a sheet peeled off a pad? Was it on an 8.5x11 sheet, folded over? That's what I think, but I could be wrong.

Wherever I wrote it, it's gone. Oh, someday it will turn up. Maybe the idea I wrote will be useful for a future blog post. But today you get this: Idea Lost. Miscellaneous ramblings about how I had nothing to post on schedule yesterday, so I'm posting nothing a day late today. By next Thursday I'll undoubtedly find the paper, or another idea will have sprung up. In the meantime, the workday beckons. I'll had to do my other blog on the noon hour. Oh, wait, we have an employee appreciation cookout then.