Ophelia by the Stream

I seem to find myself having an inordinate number of "Ophelia by the Stream" moments, in which I find my mind a total blank, alternately picking my nose and staring off into space while singing little disjointed snatches of song.

Considering what happened to Ophelia while so distracted, I'm just thankful that these moments don't happen to me while I am in walking along the shore of Lake Michigan. I have noticed that my Ophelia moments seem to coincide with--and seem in fact to be brought on by--precisely those times when I know I should be doing something constructive, like working on my next book, or writing blogs. I suspect one of the causes is that the sheer volume of everything that needs to be done often swamps my ability to choose which to do first, which then results in a circuit overload, and my brain just shorts out. Usually, I find, these incidents are also accompanied by a sustained bout with frustration. Which of these factors is the chicken and which the egg I cannot say.

I've been having an Ophelia moment this morning and, to be honest with you, am writing this blog in a thus-far-unsuccessful attempt to get over it before I attempt to do last night's dishes (hey, you never know...a sink full of soapy water, not paying attention to what I'm doing...stranger things have happened). I consider just the act of writing something...of spewing out words in hopes that they might produce something worthwhile...is my equivalent of priming the pump. The problem there is that, rather than directing my thoughts into more constructive channels, it tends to send it spinning off in a dozen different directions.

Each of us has our own frustration level--have noticed how effortlessly I've wandered off the main topic? Talk about distractions. Well, let's follow this threshold of frustration path for a bit. Mine is about the depth of a single raindrop spread over the bottom of a 9"x11" baking pan. Of course, every human being deals with frustration in some form or other every day, and most seem quite able to multi-task them.

I am definitely not a multi-tasker. Usually, when the frustrations and the "my-God,-Roger,-why-aren't- you-doing-thus-and-so"s start raining down like grain being pumped into a silo, I do my best to sidestep them until they pile up around me to the point that I haven't anywhere to move, and, again, I just shut down.

Frustrations largely come and go, but some are constant, like a chronic ache. And of course compared to Ophelia's, my frustrations are nothing. But though I don't have a boyfriend who is a prince of Denmark, who might have gotten me pregnant, and who stabbed my father, who was hiding behind a curtain (don't ask), to death, I seem to find ample frustration in my relatively dull life. At the moment I have a surfeit, but even in the best of times, there are enough to keep me occupied.

You might be surprised, for example, at just how frustrating it is to try to find ways to encourage people to read my books. (And here we go wandering off the main path again.) Unfortunately, grabbing strangers by the shoulders and screaming "READ MY BOOKS! YOU'LL LIKE THEM!" is just a bit counterproductive. But I dance as fast as I can. I'm on at least a dozen online groups and sites and networks, and write blogs and do interviews whenever anyone is kind enough to ask me, and...

So I guess my Ophelia-by-the-stream moments are understandable, though I really must apply myself to the things I have to get done today. Enough of this rambling! Get to work. (But what was it Ophelia was singing? Act IV, wasn't it? Let me look it up....Yes: "To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day, 
All in the morning betime,....")

Sigh.

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