Tag Archives: organisation

A Reflection on Age and Memory

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Today started with me examining the wreckage of my latest senior moment. However, the first thing I concluded was that it wasn’t a senior moment. It was just a mistake.

 

I’ve been worrying about making mistakes recently as i have made a few. I made the same submission to a magazine two days apart last month, forgetting I had already done it. Before that I prepared a submission and forgot to send it, which was a nuisance. Some months before that I sent the same poem to two different editors, which is a bad thing to do as it means writing to withdraw the poem as soon as you know you’ve done it. This is, I’m sure, irritating to the editor and makes me look like an idiot.  As I make more and more mistakes, I have begun to worry about my declining mental faculties and wonder about dementia. My mum had Parkinson’s and my dad had dementia. I don’t really want either.

In truth, as you get older you do get a little vaguer, which is why I have a pocket diary. I’m still not sure whether I had long COVID or not, which wouldn’t have helped. Then, as Julia says, I am disorganised and don’t get enough sleep. And I do submit a lot of poems.

Last year I made 78 submissions. This year I have already done 79 and will probably manage 100.  It’s not surprising I’m making mistakes. However, I am organising myself better. Apart from cutting out the mistakes this is already allowing me more time to write and, as a result, things are already going better.

Well, until today.  I was getting the submission together and called up the magazine’s website, as every magazine seems to have its own requirements. This makes submitting a touch irksome at times (particularly when they change them without telling you) I presume it makes the editing process easier. That seems fair. I have a handful of poems to cope with, they have thousands.

Anyway, when I checked this morning, I found I’d missed the submission date. It was last month, not this month. I presume it was a copying error when I was making the submission plan for the year. That, I think, is actually just a mistake and not a senior moment. And that is where we started.

Tomorrow I will give you my definition of “senior moment”.

Photos are wood turning by Julia – at least she goes from strength to strength in retirement. 🙂

The Science of Submissions

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Heron

For years, I used to have enough poetry available to make my submissions in the first week of a submission window opening – which generally means the first week of the month, sometimes the first day. My thoughts were three-fold.

It’s good, if possible to be ready in plenty of time, as it keeps things relaxed. I like being relaxed, and am trying to get back to that, as there is little point in writing if it isn’t fun. It also has practical benefits – I sent out six poems (two submissions of three poems each) this month and got five of them back before the end of the month – allowing me to re-edit and send them out again instead of using five new ones. A few years ago, the system went wrong as I had Covid twice, whooping cough and some things I forget, which meant I used up my surplus poems and have not yet been able to get back to my original position. Some months I do better than others, this month, for instance, I was able to start early, miss just over a week with wedding, sunburn and general heat-induced fatigue, and still finish in a reasonably civilised manner. I feel I write better when I have more time and can relax.  Other months it has been more hectic.

Heron in a tree

Another advantage is that if an editor gets two poems of similar subject and quality, it’s good to be in first as the second one will have to be better than mine to displace me. If it’s not better, there’s a good chance that mine will keep its place.

And finally, editors often talk about “fit” and “shape” of issues, as in a poems isn’t the right fit for the shape of the issue. If you get in first, according to my theory, you help set the shape and it’s other people who are rejected rather than me.

All small points, but I have been rejected for such reasons before and every little helps.

So far, unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a way of overcoming things like writing badly _ I suppose I will just have to keep trying.

Heron in a pond

 

 

2nd of the Day

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Honeysuckle

On our return home yesterday, we fell asleep. The night before had been a long one, getting everything ready, the drive hadn’t been particularly relaxing, and we are getting older. Julia went to bed for a while, I fell asleep in my chair. I woke up and went to bed around 11.00 and Julia woke up to make herself a drink. Then we slept again.

Having slept well, I rose at 6.00. At 6.48 Julia had a text from Number Two Son, who had landed at Heathrow. He will be here at around ten, with partner and The Grandson. It’s all happening.

Did you know it’s possible to have a wedding on a Tuesday and then another service and a reception on a Saturday? I didn’t. I do now.

Poppy

I just checked. In my early morning stupor I seem to have forgotten to mention that the wedding in question was that of Number One Son. Number Two is flying in to be best man at the second ceremony. These modern concepts are all a bit too new and hectic for me. It used to be so much simpler . . .

You used to get married in church. If you didn’t go to church you got married in a Registry Office. We got married in a Registry Office.  It was a simple ceremony for a simple man and it seems to have worked as we are still married.

There was a pause in my day here as we went down to pick the family up from the station and do thinsg like eat lunch, take the Grandson to see the ducks and generally chat about how tired everyone was. Flying overnight and changing time zones is nearly as tiring as being old and decrepit. It’s nice to see. For part of the afternoon Julia and I looked after the Grandson as the other went out shopping with my sister. They had things to buy you can’t get in Canada. With the soothing help of Zog (a cartoon dragon), stitching, and some crooning from Julia I soon fell asleep before she woke me to tell me I was supposed to stay awake and do grandfatherly things.

Poppy

I’m hemming a pair of trousers as the only ones I have that are deemed suitable for a smart wedding are too long for me. It comes to something when a man’s wardrobe decisions are discussed by the whole family. I can only wait with bated breath for the discussions which will surround their decision to put me in a home. The stitching is poor and erratic, and slow, and my needle threading antics are pitiful (involving a threader, cotton, needle and jeweller’s eyeglass) but I thought I should make the effort, both sartorially, and to save Julia a job as she is already racing round organising lots of other stuff.

You would never guess from my efforts that the Gregson side of my family were haberdashers and dressmakers.

I think it’s a cranesbill geranium

The Drudgery of Organisation

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Sign from the trackside between Grantham and Notingham

I have listed 44 published poems, with dates and details of first publication. I have been through them again, and they are now mainly in alphabetical order. There are several other lists to go through, then more searching to find the unlisted ones. I wish I’d been more organise. At least I was organised at times, which makes it easier than it might have been.

As a result of this month being so light on possible submissions I now have six weeks to get things organised. With any luck I may be able to submit some things as soon as the window opens in May. This was how I used to do it. In fact, I used to do all my submissions on the first day of the window instead of leaving it until the last minute. It was more relaxed and though my poetry probably wasn’t any better, it was at least edited properly.

Brick Train at Darlington

Experience tells me that I should not fritter this time away, and I am going to try not to do this. I have four minutes left, at which point it will be time o cook lunch for Julia before she goes off to help in the tearoom.

One thing I notice with my index of poems is that I have a lot of poems starting with the word “The”. I may have to try to be less formulaic.

To make the index more interesting I could, of course, index “The Banana in the Road”, an editor’s choice in Cattatils Spring 2022 edition as “Banana in the Road, The”.

It’s a thought . . .

Mallard at the National Railway Museum – looks fast even when she’s standing still.

 

 

A Quandary at a Crossroads on the Horns of a Dilemma

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Medallion with box and leaflet

Two days ago, I wrote the beginning of a post, then tried three middles, which all took a turn that I didn’t want to pursue. And suddenly, as so many times, it’s two days later and I’ve written nothing. It’s not like I’ve been idle, but I have managed to stay busy and still accomplish nothing. All my talk of focus and being conscious of the passage of time has, as usual, counted for little.

At the moment I have several choices.  One, I can blog. That, as you can probably guess, is what has happened. Two, I can write a couple of passages of disambiguation for the medallion book I am helping to edit. Three, I can go through the list of Nottinghamshire medallions which will be an appendix to the book. Four, I can write poetry. Five, I can go to Derbyshire  to look for jewellery for Julia’s birthday. And six, I can wait in to see what the conservatory man says about the leaks.

As I have no real choice about number six, I won’t be travelling to Derbyshire today. It’s an hour and a half longer when you start from here than it is from Nottingham, and I wouldn’t be able to get back in time to feel faint at the cost of the job.

And by the time I’ve finished this post I will probably have forgotten about writing poetry.

Death sells tickets for the final voyage

Tomorrow is out for Derbyshire as it’s Julia’s wood turning day. Looks like we  will be going on Wednesday. Of course, that also depends on the weather.  If not, Thursday is available as Friday is cafe day. Things are gathering pace there, with Julia’s policy of writing about people for the newsletter making her a lot of new friends. It’s a good policy. If you can’t have lambs or kittens (or puppies or piglets or poultry) go for people.

That reminds me – seven, discuss the social media strategy for the Numismatic Society. It’s all very well having a selection of interesting numismatic articles, but why are we doing it. With half a dozen regular readers we aren’t spreading numismatic knowledge or increasing our membership so, apart from two of us sharpening our writing style, what are we actually doing it for?

It’s here, by the way. Last week’s Lusitania article might be a bit more interesting than some of the more numismatic bits, if you are inclined to read a bit of history.

The photos are the famous, or infamous, Lusitania medallion. Originally produced by Karl Goetz to ridicule the greed of people who sailed in the face of danger in order to do business, it was adopted by the British, who used the medallion and the error in dates, to make it look like the Germans were congratulating themselves on the success of the attack. I was always told by my parents that propaganda was a Nazi invention for WW2. In fact, Hitler was so convinced that British propaganda had helped win the war that he adopted our methods when he took power in Germany.

And the other side – showing artillery pieces on deck, even though there were none on board.

 

 

Post 2 – Lists and Lost Poems

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I’m sure I wrote at least half of a second post before I wandered away. It has disappeared. Worse, I can’t remember what I said, I just know it wasn’t what I had planned on saying. Old age and a head full of rubbish. It’s not a great combination for clarity and productivity.

I’ve been sorting poetry. I have sufficient published  Haibun and Tanka Prose to attempt a poetry collection.. Unfortunately I can’t find all of them.

Three of them, I remember, and remember where two of them were published. I can probably find them. Two others I don’t even remember what the subject matter is. One  may not actually exist. I think that is down to a title change.  Then there are several others which I think were accepted but I don’t have listed. I think I just remembered where one of them is published . . .

I do need a better system. I also need to back up my computer regularly as I have lost quite a lot of information over the years. Fortunately most of it can be dragged out of emails.

Latest News – I just went to the Wales Haiku Journal and dug out two poems – one that I knew was there and one I’d forgotten about but remembered whilst writing about forgotten poems. It’s not all about numbers and I made it a policy only to count them up until I reached 100. At 100 I thought I’d done enough to show I was serious. After that it’s about quality.  I have in the past been critical of people who talk about numbers of poems as if quantity means they are a good poet. I’m only looking at numbers again because it feels like time to do a book. I’m not really driven to do a book, but it feels like something I should do now that I’m retired.

PS – Just found two that I didn’t have listed – they were two that I thought were published, but had forgotten where. Whatever happened to my memory?

Orange Parker Pen

Organising My Writing

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I need 27 tanka and 13 Haibun/Tanka Prose to send off before the end of the month. It seems like a lot, but to be honest, I have a few tanka done and even if I didn’t I can easily knock two dozen off in a couple of days. They won’t be my best work but if I’m honest, I could spend a lifetime writing 24 poems and still not feel they were good enough. Do them, move on, learn, improve.

The Haibun and Tanka Prose, look like more of a problem, though I do actually have about 23 that are complete or nearly complete when I count them up. Again, it’s that old story – I can mess with them for years without them seeming good enough, so I may as well just send them as soon as they seem acceptable. I hope that if I keep writing I will eventually learn to write better.

Next month I need 3 Haibun and 3 Tanka Prose. That will be easy as most editors ask for up to three then return two. I can almost guarantee that if I send the rejects out some will be accepted.

Talking of working on Haibun for years, there are several that have been knocking about for a couple of years now, including some that I’ve never sent out. The truth is that no matter how much you improve the writing, some of the subjects are so dull or so convoluted that they just don’t work.  I will have  Spring Clean next month and send them into storage.

There is a variety in this lot – ducks (one of my favourite subjects), insomnia, age, family stories, religion, funerals, pigs, wheelbarrows, prostate problems . . .

My life is a rich seam of inspiration, though it’s fair to say that my mind does not inhabit the higher planes of human existence.

As for the rest of the day, I slept badly and woke up feeling tired. However, it is Sunday, so I turned over, ignored Julia’s suggestion that I might like to get up and make her breakfast, and woke two hours later with a bad back.

Yes, I too believe that sleep was cursed by my cavalier disregard for my wife’s feelings regarding breakfast.

Unfortunately, one thing goes wrong and everything else follows. I dressed slowly, got my feet stuck in my trousers and struggled to get my slipper socks on. If you put them on before your trousers they get caught, if you put them on after it can be tricky bending your knees enough to reach. And if you don’t put them on, your feet get cold.

It’s not been too bad since then, though the decision to watch Supervized proved to be a bad one. It’s a film with a good central concept, a generally mediocre cast (though I always like to see Clive Russell, and a poor script.

We are having pork and roast veg for tea, and Julia has just walked past with it, so if you will excuse me, I need to go . . .

(It was very good, so good that I ate, watched the Pottery Throw-Down and forgot to post this until I woke, still asleep in my chair.)

Orange Parker Pen

 

Still Struggling

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Much of writing a slideshow presentation involves the same difficulty as writing a poem, with the extra difficulty of facts and photos being thrown in.

I’ve successfully procrastinated for eight months now, and followed that up with evasion, displacement activity and sloth over the last few months. That moved on to struggling to write in the last couple of weeks as I just couldn’t get into it. That is quite like poetry, though the timescale is different. I did managed to produce some photos, facts and slides but I couldn’t get the narrative going and my internal editor has seen me start and restart the presentation a dozen times. In the end I decided to put my head down and start writing. Eventually, it came right.

I now have a suitable opening and quite a lot of other bits and pieces. I also have 24 hours and 13 minutes before I am supposed to turn up to the meeting (I decided to take Monday off work – I could do with a break and I need the time to finish.

The plan is to blast through the rest of the slides tonight and establish the order and narrative. I will check the timing and write a list of things that still need doing. I will finalise it tomorrow morning before I take and load any extra photographs I need, check facts and write the prompts. I don’t need prompts as such, because it’s all on screen or in my head, but there are always a few last minute facts to note. Mainly though, I do it as practice and memory training and, to be honest, in case the presentation doesn’t work and I have to revert to the old-fashioned method of talking at a crowd.

That, I think, is about it. I will load this post and get back to work.

Shakespeare Medallion by Paul Vincze

Day 85

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Time, I think, to get organised. I’ve been sleeping so much that I am feeling refreshed and ready for anything. I also just read a post that talks about the Hundred Day Project, and it reminded me how I used to make myself practice.

Strange how you can forget. I’ll be doing something to remedy the situation in the next week or two, but for now I have to concentrate on getting some submissions finalised and sent out. That’s often the problem – having so much to do immediately that I can’t see the wood for the trees.

I have at least remembered to order a new supply of pills online – I can often take a week to remember as I switch the computer on, then wander off to do something more interesting. Tonight, however, I went there first. Ridiculous how I feel so happy to have done something right. It’s not as if it’s difficult. Well, not for most people, just us procrastinators.

I needed to get the top off a jar tonight. It’s a sure sign of growing old that I even think this is a subject worth discussing. My preferred method is to increase my grip with a rubber band wound round the lid, but I never have one when I need one. My next method in order of precedence is to release the vacuum seal by pouring boiling water on the lid and making things expand. This didn’t work. Method three is to tap the top on the work surface, though I’m always worried about breaking something. This finally worked.

My fourth method is to shout for Julia and act helpless. She usually takes the lid off easily. If not, we have method five, which is to release the vacuum by punching a hole through the lid with a decent sized knife. If that doesn’t work you really do have a tenacious lid.

The photos are the only ones I have with “jar” in the title.

Glass Jars

 

Day 39

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I’m writing again now, and some of it has promise. I’ve even started reading a bit more. Unfortunately, like my weight loss, I still need to do a lot more.

Of course, the time can’t just be devoted to writing. Even the “writing time” has to take in research and administration. I need to get my submissions log up to date, as I didn’t record everything that went out in the rush at the end of January. I also need to get my printouts of published poems up to date – they are probably lagging by six months but I like to keep a hard copy so that I can browse it when I’m feeling down. The printer has broken, yet again, and I really need to get another one. However, it doesn’t seem as simple as it used to be, and I keep putting it off for fear of buying the wrong sort.

A lot of them seem to be wireless or bluetooth these days and I’ve never had much luck with either system.

Although I’m currently writing various things I will have to find out which magazines are open for submissions before I go much further. It’s a lot easier to meet a deadline when you know the exact date.

The header photo is a temperance medal from the Independent Order of Good Templars, who broke away from the Order of Good Templars in 1852 (which reminds me of so many committees I have seen). They eventually merged again, expanded internationally and are now known as the International Organisation of Good Templars. The medal dates from the latter part of the 19th century and is in excellent condition for its age. I listed it just before lunch yesterday and someone bought it twenty minutes later. With that and the cigarette case I seem to be on a roll. The medal is big, about 45mm in diameter, despite the size it appears to be on my screen. I haven’t quite got the hang of sizing photos yet.

Independent Order of Good Templars medal (obverse)

Independent Order of Good Templars medal (Reverse)