Give It or Toss It?
That was the question weighing pretty heavily on my mind this weekend as I repotted and trimmed a couple of plants. Ironically, just two days before, someone was looking for moss on a local plant FB page, and I offered some up without too much hesitation.

But Sunday, as I cut off strands of my N’Joy pothos, divided my spider plant and took several runners with babies off that as well (I was repotting them both), I had a bit of a quandary. On the one hand, no one likes wasting good plant material, or just dumping living things (except duckweed – I don’t know anyone who doesn’t mind dumping that, preferably somewhere it will dry out and die). On the other, I didn’t want to use any of my own resources (soil, paper towels, water, etc) to keep those cuttings/baby plants alive until I could pass them on, much less the space it takes to simply store them until someone picks them up.

And then of course there’s the posting a notice online, connecting with actual people and coordinating times and days and all that jazz…sometimes, it’s nothing.

Sunday, it felt like too much.

So, after probably twenty minutes of going back and forth with myself, I finally just wrapped up all the extra plant material and tossed it in the garbage. After which I realized I should have just tossed it in the compost pile, of course, but it was so much work just deciding not to offer it up that I really don’t regret just getting rid of it.

Sometimes, that’s the right choice. I prefer to be generous and give things away when I can – not just plant material, but anything that’s still potentially useful and has some “life” left in it, but some days, I just can’t. And I think ultimately, that’s okay. While it’s good to share, and good to pass things along so someone else can continue to use or get joy from them, I think I need to be easier on myself about those times when I just can’t bring myself to go to the effort.

As long as it’s not every time. Because I do think passing things along and sharing what I don’t need anymore is an important part of participating in “community” as a whole.

Writing News
Last week, I sat down and really thought about why I was having trouble writing at night. I knew the problem with dictation is that I keep dropping the writing, so then it’s harder to pick up the thread if I try to dictate. But what was my problem with writing?

Paying attention to my current habits, I realized that my brain is trained for work – the day job. I work in IT, so when I sit down at a computer (any computer) the very first thing I do is check email. And I don’t write fiction at work, so I’m “trained” not to write on the computer. Which means I have a pretty steep battle when it comes to getting my mind to realize that my laptop at home is not my computer at work, but being a creature of habit and routine, my brain just doesn’t want to accept that, and will do anything it can to distract me from writing fiction at the computer. I can format books, do budgeting, do image manipulation, social media, even plotting – my brain is good with all that at a bright, color computer screen. Writing fiction? Not so much.

I have the tools to combat that, though, now that I know what’s going on. So the first thing I did was cleaned off my writing desk – which is a small rolltop (seen to your left below) that doesn’t even have space for my laptop or a normal monitor. It can’t be confused for a computer desk at all.

Then I charged up my Freewrite Traveler (on the rolltop above) which looks like a tiny laptop, but is really just a nice keyboard with a tiny e-ink screen. No backlighting, no application capabilities, no browsing, no email…it’s purely a word processor. That set the stage for *writing*…not work, not work or admin type projects.

The only thing left after that was to change my routine, which I did the next night. Instead of going into my office and immediately sitting at the computer, I went straight to the writing desk (which is right beside the computer desk, so it’s just a turn to the left, as you see above). With my reMarkable (e-ink tablet) at the side, I opened my Freewrite, opened a new document, and started typing. Fiction.

It was pretty weird and amazing how my brain got clued into the different environment so quickly. I didn’t have the urge to pick up my phone and check email, or anything like that. It was like my mind recognized the space and the reason we were there, and reacted accordingly. Which is pretty amazing, when you think about it.

After I finished that writing session, I closed the Freewrite, opened a new “scene journal” document on the reMarkable, and wrote a short paragraph summary of what I’d just written, so I could easily pick up the thread the next day (whether dictating or typing). I always wonder if it’s just going to be a “this worked one time, but never again” sort of thing, but it worked the next night and the next night too. And that’s how I ended up with a good half of my Christmas card short story done last week.

This week, I’m working dictation back into the mix. With any luck, by November I’ll be back in the daily writing habit, and will just need to speed up the word count!

Recommendation(s)
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of devices that do one thing well. The Freewrite Traveler is one of those devices, and I’d feel confident recommending the entire Freewrite line. If you’re a writer who’s used or still uses an AlphaSmart to write (I have a couple around here somewhere), the Freewrite crew is coming out with an updated version simply called “Alpha” here soon that I think is going to be cheaper than both the original Freewrite and the Traveler (which is what I have).

Anyways, check ’em out for distraction-free writing. The links are non-affiliate, as always.