Personal
Personal reflections, comments about things I've been doing, etc.
Personal Updates: Our seven year anniversery
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 11/04/2007 - 09:52Seven years ago, Kim and I were married in a small Episcopal Church in Stamford, CT. The reception took place at the Stamford Yacht Club. It was a wonderful day, and it has been a wonderful, yet at times, trying, seven years. Depending on who you ask, this is our copper or wool anniversary, but given our finances, we aren’t doing anything special this year, except for the duck which Kim will cook today. Duck is one of those special meals that we have.
The novel that I’m writing for National Novel Writing Month, (NaNoWriMo) is going very well. This morning, I broke the 10,000 word mark. I’m spending time visiting various online NaNoWriMo groups. Through this I found a blog post, Word count: 3337 by PurpleCar. In it, she wrote, “If you dread writing it, readers will dread reading it.” A wise word of warning. On the other hand, I can’t stop writing my novel, I can’t put it down. My biggest concern is that it will end too soon, that I’ll run out of story line. I’m itching to get to the really meaty part of the story. If PurpleCar’s comments bear up, hopefully, my readers won’t be able to put down my novel, will want to get to the meaty part of the story, and will be hoping it won’t end too soon.
As I perused the various communities, I stumbled across another interesting site, Gifted Mind. It has links to articles like Discovering the Gifted Ex-Child. It made me think of “finding your inner gifted child”.
So, today, I will write more. We will go to church. We will eat duck. Hopefully, it will be an idyllic New England autumn day.
For all the rabbits, writing novels this month
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 11/01/2007 - 07:30Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. The poet tells us April is the cruelest month. Perhaps November is the most complicated. Like other months, I start off with “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit”, the old phrase we said as kids at the beginning of each month, hoping to bring good luck. I could sure use a little good luck right about now.
Then, my title mashes up two other important themes for the month. Everyone was out last night for Halloween, also known as All Saint’s Eve. Today, is All Saints day, a day we remember those who have died. There is a great hymn which is often sung on All Saints day, or the Sunday immediately following, which begins,
For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Finally, today starts National Novel Writing Month. So, mashed all together, I get, “For all the rabbits, writing novels this month.”
In a few moments, I will shower, and drive to the train station. I have a big meeting in New York today. Providing I can find enough energy for myself and for my laptop, that will give me a great opportunity to start writing my novel.
That may be a challenge. Kim is fighting a cold and didn’t sleep well last night, so I worry that I may be fighting something similar and did not get much sleep on account of all her tossing last night. However, I did get a good working tagline for my proposed novel, “They saw their dreams start to come true online, but things don’t always turn out as planned.” It is going to be about the experiences of people in Second Life, and I hope this catches your interest, piques your curiosity, and that I actually get time to get this written.
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 10/31/2007 - 11:10
Themes in Memes
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 10/30/2007 - 09:38Yesterday, I reflected on the San Diego fires and pondered what I would take with me if I had to flee my house. Emily at been there picked up the theme adding the comment, “it's all about family connections for me too” and going on to say,
I'd take the diaries I wrote for each of my girls during her first year, my photo albums from the pre-digital era, and the painting of my grandmother that my mother gave me recently.
There are some great comments over on Emily’s blog. She also posted about this over on the motherhood, a wonderful site, I would encourage all of you to connect with.
Beth, at mylifestartsatfortytwo.com picks up the meme as well. Beth and Rod were amongst the people I was thinking about when I wrote my blog post, so I’m very grateful that she wrote about it. She talks about having moved a lot in her adult life and has some great reflections on this.
It seems as if a key theme is holding onto memories, the symbols in our lives that lift us up instead of the objects in our lives that tie use down. Another theme is the use of digital archives to save these memories, blogs, photo archives, and video archives.
God willing, we will never face fires or holocausts. However, we all face life changing events, whether it is changes in our work, our health, our relationships or other important aspects of our lives, and thinking about what we take with us is important.
But now old friends are acting strange,
they shake their heads, they say I've changed.
Something's lost but something's gained
in living every day.
- Joni Mitchell Both Sides Now
What will you take with you?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 10/29/2007 - 09:29Various friends of mine online live near the fires in San Diego. These fires have brought up one of those great old questions that people use as icebreakers. If your house is on fire, and you can grab one thing before you rush out, what would it be?
For all of you social bloggers who love memes, please, leave a comment on your answer and/or post your response on your blog.
For me, it is an interesting question. We’ve just moved. I had been in the previous house for fifteen years. It was a large house and a lot of junk piled up. We got rid of three large dumpsters of junk. We had a tag sale. We gave away stuff with freecycle. We move most of what was left, although we still have stuff in that needs to be moved or gotten rid of.
Through this, I’ve become much less attached to different objects. What matters to me, beyond my family, is mostly up online, my blog entries, my photographs. So, I don’t have a good answer to the question.
However, I did get an interesting email from a friend in San Diego. She is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. She grew up being constantly told not to get too connected to material goods because hanging on to them could result in death if you couldn’t flee in time. Yet even for her, there are objects of great importance and she wrote about waking up in the middle of the night wanting to contact her daughter to reminder her about the Shabbat/Sabbath candlesticks that her mother had brought with her from Germany when she fled.
There are objects in our lives that tie us down. There are symbols in our lives that lift us up. It is important to know which is which.
