Of Broomsticks And Inspiration

As you know, these days have found me with a lot less internet time than I would have hoped for. To call this hindrance really annoying would be like calling a bullet to the heart simply an inconvenience.

Hey, not all of us are Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In any case, the opportunist that I am, you would expect me to use this occasion to begin writing again. Lazy or not, the pure boredom would probably get me to back to my stories like nothing else ever could.

Probably might have worked, really. Except for one simple thing. Or, well, to be more accurate, a lack of it.

Electricity.

The power cuts took care of whatever hope I had. From eight am to six pm, workers would be busy down the road meddling with all those cables, shifting them from old post to new. Obviously, it would seem that they were averse to electrocution, but still, you’d think that their payment covers… Never mind.

Bottom line, no electricity during the day. My laptop battery doesn’t last half a minute if it gets unplugged from the main while the lap is still on.

Ergo, not only did I no longer have access to the wonderful World Wide Web, as of now I also did not have access to my Dear Delightful Dell during daylight hours. And by the time night finally rolled around, I was in no mood to start writing. All I have the energy to do is plop on my headphones and play a movie.

Did I just hear you say, “Excuses, excuses,”? Well, excuuuuuse me.

See, it was a stark eye opener for me after getting used to days at home being glued to my laptop. I was miserable, and I was not sure of what I could possibly do to pass the time. My mother, on the other hand, could not be happier. And as usual with mothers, she had plenty of ideas for constructive activities.

Together, she and I managed to:

a)      get the wooden steps polished

b)      get my bed painted

c)       empty my metal cupboard

d)      haul that metal cupboard outside the house

e)      shove it to the second floor

f)       store it in the store room upstairs

g)      get the new wooden armoire assembled in my room

h)      have that new one repainted and re-polished

i)        arrange my clothes (neatly!) inside it

j)        arrange my overall room (sort of)

To be quite honest, I have to mention the fact that when I say ‘she and I’, what I really mean I did all the work. My mother did, however, play a vital part in the proceedings of all my endeavors. Her role was akin to that of the stereotypical evil factory overseer with baton in hand, or perhaps even to the infamous Roman slave driver (yes, the one with the whip).

It was a simple partnership, if it could be called that. I would toil away while she stood guard, glaring at me with broom in hand. Said broom was never meant for the mundane and humble profession of simply sweeping; its role in Mum’s hands was far more of an intimidatiary capacity, and I must say it did its work quite well.

My mother is an extremely practical woman. I guess that’s where I get my slight streak of practicality from. She knew perfectly well that when the days that granted me power and internet returned again, no force short of God’s Will could get me out of my seat if I didn’t want to.

(By the way, toilet breaks, earthquakes, civil war and sniper attacks all fall into the category “Will of God,”, in case you were wondering)

In any case, before those blissful days returned, Mum was going to darn well make sure that she was going to utilize every second of physical labor she could squeeze out of me. And if it came down to a broomstick on my backside, well then so be it.

After all, it was for the greater good.

But hey, I made sure to invest as well. As every person knows, brownie points with parents, especially mothers, can prove extremely useful when the time comes to cash in. And in this household, that rule holds hard and stern, a fact for which I am duly, eternally grateful.

To that end, as you can imagine, I make sure that in the very least it looks like I gave it my all whenever I was drafted into some death defying task like cleaning out my room (danger toxic poisoning) or cobweb cleaning (did you know all spiders are venomous?) or sweeping the garden (asthma has been known to cause deaths).

So the very next time Mum sees me curled up with a book and starts looking around for something ‘productive’ for me to do, I can say something like, “Do you still have that oil for back pain? I think I might have cramped something up while lifting that *insert large heavy object*”

Of course, she knows I’m shamming. She’s seen me through two decades, after all. In any case, I am a colossal klutz, and most injuries actually tend to be real. Most of the time, she lets it slide and leaves me go back to my book.

Of course, there have been times when I was in real pain, but she still made me do stuff because she thought I was making it up. Goes to show how good an actor I am.

So, to get to the point (if there was a point to begin with), since the 23^rd of March, I was kept busy, and as a direct result, I kept finding myself in the completely wrong mood to sit down and start writing. It’s getting so that I can’t even think up some good stuff to post here. See, I’m currently writing this while episode 17 of the first season of Elementary is playing in the background.

Why am I writing at all? Through thick and thin, the blog must go on. I’m at my self-imposed deadline to keep it ticking, and I hadn’t a clue what to write about.

So, I opened Word and started typing, and I swear, in my mind I was planning to go on about how Elementary differed to BBC’s new Sherlock (with Benedict Cummerbatch and Martin Freeman). Now I’m reading what I’ve written thus far and it is as far away from comparing two Sherlocks as I am from the moon.

So, dear reader, the moral of today’s ramble: if you need inspiration, put pen to paper. Or in this case, finger to keyboard while Word is on screen.

  

Forget coming up with something to write about, I even managed to get a moral here. Yikes. That there is testament to what can happen if you just start. And I’m telling you, if that isn’t inspired thinking, I don’t know what is.