Hello internet, welcome back Aaron Volner after a month of disappearing into puppy raising. My little guy Andy is turning out to be a real cuddly playful treasure, although occasionally a little butt head when he hasn’t gotten enough exercise.
Case in point, the other day when we were on the couch and I was crocheting and watching some TV while recovering from a recent illness. I was contentedly working away when Andy decided he had a powerful need to play like right freaking now. I decided to finish the row I was on before taking him out for a little run in the yard. This, unfortunately, was not so much working for Andy.
“Dad! I want to play NOW!” was essentially the message I was getting from the perturbed barking at me. I kept telling him to stop, which usually works, but with me too sick for walks for a couple days and major pent up energy flowing Andy was having none of my having none of it. Generally in these situations I can pick up him and hold him in my lap until he calms down, but this time reaching down was apparently a signal for playing.
Of course right at this same time my skein fell on the floor. Now yarn, for those of you who might be unaware, is just soft and colorful enough to really look like an awesome and fun toy. So, into Andy’s mouth goes the skein, and off goes Andy.
“Andy no!”
While I flounder fruitlessly behind, hands outstretched in a desperate and pointless bid to catch the 8 pound terror zooming a circuit around my coffee table, the skein is unraveling and leaving a trail of blue yarn across my living room. A trail which ultimately proved to be the tiny thief’s undoing. About the fourth lap around the coffee table the yarn got caught in such a way that a streamer of it pulled taught between the table and the couch. While a stretch of yarn isn’t exactly a brutal net or cable, Andy was flustered by this bizarre obstruction in front of him and finally had to stop and try and figure out a way around it. Just the distraction I needed to snatch up the little yarn thief and liberate my skein from his tiny jaws.
Still, when you stop and think about it, how many of us are undone by carelessly continuing the same circuit of behavior over and over. Whether in writing or in other parts of life, we continue to pursue things in a certain way until finally our own behavior catches up to us. Instead of turning in a new direction and getting to spread blue yarn even more places while the world flounders helplessly to catch us, we get caught in the same old rut and end up falling victim to our own devices.
I’ve been guilty of this many times in my life, and sometimes its had a real negative impact on my writing. Lowered productivity, lower creativity, demolished confidence or simply an aimlessness that results in, to quote the bard, a great deal of sound and fury signifying nothing. All things that have happened to me at one time or another, all things that could have been avoided if I had just realized that what I was doing wasn’t working anymore and made some kind of change. I’ve been making an honest effort to change this and recognize sooner when I need a change of direction or pace, and perhaps my little guy will help me out with that as we grow together.
Canine Writing Lesson #4: He who changes his course will not get caught by his human, and will play with the yarn longer.
Human Translation: Sometimes we need evaluate what we’re doing and change course, or risk getting caught in a rut where our writing, or other aspects of our life, will begin to suffer.
