The shortest month

Hold on to your hats, folks. Okay, don’t get too excited. I’ve picked February, the shortest month (not even a Leap Year), as the month when I will write something every day – no matter how boring it turns out to be.

It’s also the month when I am vowing (takes a deep breath before committing) that I will not play a single game of spider solitaire. Yes, despite the excitement of actually producing a one-act play, there’s been some serious slippage – days of checking email, checking Facebook, doing Duolingo homework and then hours and hours of stupid fucking spider solitaire. Well, not this month. (Gulp.)

It’s also going to be a month of at least one (as opposed to just one) thing. Every day in February, in addition to email, Facebook, Duolingo and writing something (none of which counts as just one thing), I will do at least one thing. This could be polishing the furniture or cleaning the toilet (actually I did that a couple of days ago) or washing the kitchen floor or pruning the roses or restacking the woodshed. Get the hoover out? Maybe. Attack the pile of filing beside the desk? Maybe. There are plenty of jobs. At least one a day.

A while ago I ordered a copy of Barack Obama’s autobiography (volume one). I told myself when I did so that when it arrived it would be the book that got me into the other chair.

If you’ve been around for a while (and have a bloody good memory) you might recall me writing about these two chairs before.

When Obama’s opus arrived, I would spend however many afternoons it took (other than walking days with Georgie) to finish the book sitting in the reading chair. The book arrived a few days ago. Have I spent a single afternoon reading in the reading chair? No, I have not. As God (assuming he exists) is my witness, I am getting into that chair this afternoon.

Yesterday was my mum’s birthday. As I’ve done every year since 1989, the year after her death, I wrote her a letter. Some years (like 2006 when I was in Nigeria) the “letter” has been little more than a few paragraphs scribbled into a journal. Yesterday’s letter, not surprisingly, took most of the day to write. Thousands and thousands of words, none of which are for public consumption. Definitely qualified as one big thing, so no beating myself up for getting nothing else done yesterday.

Well, not today. Today I am going to post this, then I am going to have some breakfast, then I am going to get the furniture polish out so tomorrow when I sit down here I will not be able to read the word DUST which I drew in said dust a few accusatory days ago. After than I am going to sit down in that other chair with Obama. (In case anyone is wondering, you really can hear his voice in his writing. It’s quite delightful.)

Okay, let’s get this show on the road.