stationery – Page 4 – Deborah Makarios

October 7, 2016October 20, 2017

Old-Fashioned Fruitcake

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed a change or two of late, on or about this blog. I decided, while taking an unpacking-holiday (if such a thing can exist) to spruce the place up a bit. Take it out and beat it like an old carpet, that sort of thing.

I ended up changing the featured image, the about page, my gravatar and the subtitle. (I stopped short at changing my name. One can have too much of a good thing.) Let us review the changes one by one.

First I changed the featured image to Tea Party by Louis Moeller. I don’t know who these old ladies are, but by golly they look like they’re having a grand old time. I feel like clapping on my doily cap and pulling up a chair.

Then I changed my gravatar from the reading jester to this smiley old lady, knitting. I want to be like her when I grow up, with white hair and a gentle smile and plenty of knitting. Also cats (not shown). Knitting and cats are easily come by; a smile takes only a moment; but white hair and wrinkles you have to earn.

I also rewrote the About page, if you’re interested in taking a look at that. It is still about me, though. Sorry to disappoint those of you who thought it might be about cooling systems for nuclear reactors, or how to breed newts. (Please do not try breeding newts in a nuclear reactor. The last thing we need is an increase in the world population of giant radioactive newts.)

And there’s a change to the subtitle: Old-Fashioned Fruitcake. I am, after all, an unashamedly old-fashioned person, a traitor to my time. And I am – I defy anyone to disprove it – a fruitcake. Nutty as a fruitcake, anyway. Although being an old-fashioned fruitcake, I can’t keep currant. (I am so sorry. I would like to say this will not happen again, but we both know it will.)

Yes, the Eccentric Ethic and Æsthetic is no more – although I can assure you there will still be plenty of Ethics, Æsthetics and Eccentricity scudding about the place. Just… fruitier. And, as the label suggests, old-fashioned. There will be LOLs (both kinds – laughs out loud and little old ladies); there will be handwork, housework and headwear; stationery and simplicity; tea and old technologies.

Think of this, if you would be so good, as a non-stop tea-party to which you are always welcome to drop in for a cuppa, a chat, and a good laugh. There may even be scones, and, when the season is right, jam – but please don’t eat the Fruitcake!

March 22, 2014

Of Goals and the Nature of Infinity

They say everyone needs something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. I’d add a fourth, although it’s sort of a mixture of #1 and #3: something to aim for. Goals.

Not that sort – for someone with my athletic ability, a good game is one in which I don’t catch the ball with my face (I’m good at this, regardless of the sport and whether I’m actually playing it or just happened to be walking past).

I’m practically addicted to setting goals for myself, but they tend to be either unachievable or unachieved. Or both. See Exhibit A, Exhibit B, and Exhibit C. The prosecution rests, m’lud.

My official goal as a full-time writer is 13 manuscript pages a day (2,000 words) or 65 pages a week. My first week as a writer seemed to be spent largely at the vet, and this week I wrote even less (for personal reasons I won’t bore you with).

Let me set the scene for you.
INT: HOUSE. THURSDAY EVENING.
Deborah looks at this week’s page count: six. Nearby is the Caped Gooseberry (M.Sc, Mathematics).

DM: Six pages is something. Six is infinitely times as many as zero. (thinks) Is that right?
CG: Um… (trying to be tactful) it’s difficult to be consistent when multiplying by infinity. (encouragingly) Six is six times as many as one.
DM: What makes you think I’m trying to be consistent? (thinks some more) One is infinitely more than zero.
CG: No, one is one more than zero.
DM: (defensive) One can be infinite, if it’s the right one.
CG: Umm…

Apparently my theoretical mathematics is what is known as “not even wrong”.

Still, something is better than nothing, and next week is a new week (just to get all my clichés in one basket). Today I counted up the pages left unwritten in my current exercise book (the one I bought before Christmas) and decided that my goal for the coming week would be to fill those 42 pages up. It’s less than my original target, but (ulp!) more than I actually wrote in the preceding two weeks combined.

Of course, this is a thinly disguised carrot: if I fill up this book I will then have to go and shop for another one. Mmm, stationery shopping! (It’s not just me, is it?)

Are you a goal-junkie too? Do you actually manage to have reasonable expectations or are you like me, careering wildly from aspiration-induced high to shortfall-induced low? Is there a cure? Your insights welcomed.

November 3, 2013

Goals and Incentives

Strange how memories forgotten for years can suddenly return with such intensity. This week I have been remembering a newspaper cutting I had on my wall as a girl, which was on the subject of setting and achieving goals.

I remember the paragraph which said to list What’s In It For Me – taking the pragmatic if somewhat un-altruistic view that you couldn’t set goals which only benefited others.
I remember the remarkably bad posture [straightens back] of the young people in the illustrations, who appeared to have been genetically modified with turtle DNA (and not the ninja sort, either).

But before either of these I remembered the feeling of order, perhaps even control, which the cutting gave me. I could set goals, break them down into steps, and then achieve them, at least in theory. I could accomplish things.

For some reason (early exposure to the classics?) I always wanted to be accomplished. To my chagrin, I live in a modern society which does not really go in for accomplishments, and therefore gives me nothing to measure myself against (rather like modern manners).

There is of course always Miss Bingley’s definition: “no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”

I have a smattering of modern languages, and my posture is at least better than the teenage turtle-mutants in the clipping. Let us draw the curtain of charity over my abilities as to the rest. I might do slightly better in Mr Darcy’s estimation (“to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading”) were it not that he expected all the rest as well. An accomplished lady of the Regency, then, I shall clearly never be.

Well, never mind. Mr Darcy isn’t a patch on the Caped Gooseberry anyway.

The resurfaced memories did make me think again about motivation and goals. While working toward a larger goal, it can sometimes be necessary to motivate oneself in the short term. Never mind what’s in it for me next year, I want to sleep now!

Sometimes it pays to use the carrot instead of the stick, to provide yourself with a few extra incentives. For example, if I manage to write 4,000 words tomorrow, I can go and buy a new exercise book.

To be fair, I’m making a virtue of necessity in this case, as if I write 4,000 words there won’t be room in my current book for another Monday’s worth of words. But buying a new one will be enjoyable just the same.

When I finally finish the first draft of my WIP, I might buy myself one of these to celebrate.
Do you detect a certain stationery orientation in my incentives?

I admit it – I love stationery. As a child of six, I kept an envelope full of blank strips of paper in my room. They weren’t even cut straight, but there was something indefinably pleasing about them. I used to take them out and fan them through my fingers. (Weird kid? Yes. Point?)

Pens, paper, ink – I love them. And if that love can spur me on to keep writing when The End seems unimaginably far away, then even better.

What are your goals? And what are your favourite incentives? All correspondence welcomed.