Outline

I'm heading back to work this morning---on my bike.
It's 15ºF ( -9 C) outside, my cut off. The next ten days are due to be colder, so I'll take the bus--two, actually, and those are slower and potentially distressing, depending on who's doing what on the bus.

Work has been mostly good, emotionally--and when it's not, I set my intention to ask myself, "So what?"
Sometimes the 'what' matters, and there's something that I can do.
Often, neither.

The Marzipan drives back to Duluth today--like a Lemony Snicket child, she says.
It's an unfortunate event all right:
the next semester doesn't start for 11 days, but she has to be there for her job at the grocery, which is boring and lonely. And Duluth is even colder than here, "and full of hills and trolls," says Marz.

She is not a happy camper. Too long a break can be demoralizing--you lose momentum.
But I trust she is doing a good thing, going to college. Study is a whetstone, and I can see its effects.

My brain could use a little honing too... Last year I was learning about human neurology and psychology, working with autistic high-schoolers (and school administrators, who were harder to understand--and I'm not kidding).
This year I'm back at my old job, which is a good place for me but does not light up the little gray cells.
I must consider, What now?

I shouldn't say this because I (almost) never DO it, but working out story plots would be a good exercise.
I'm always saying, that would make a good story.
Do you do this?

Even if I didn't write the story, I could jot down an outline.
Like, remember when Deepak Chopra said he'd like to be alone with Trump on an island for . . . a week, was it? to help DT heal.
Wouldn't it be funny to work out what would happen?
Would DT find his wounded inner child and weep and weep?
Or would he kill and eat Deepak?
Does DT know how to make a fire?
Would he eat our hero raw?
I would have to think all that out.

Bradbury is wrong: it is possible to write badly week after week; but if I came up with an idea for a story every week, some of them are bound to be good. Maybe I'll try just jotting them down, as brain exercise.

The decks are clear--there's not much I have to do otherwise. Yesterday I cleaned my apartment and cleaned my online clutter a little too. I unfriended 8 of my 69 FB 'friends' (who are you?) and deleted a bunch of FB and IG posts.
So--I've got free space.

Okay, time to bundle up warm and head out...
Ciao, everybody!