photo by Frank Armstrong
Inception
If you’ve wondered why I’ve been posting so much the past few weeks there is a simple answer – I made a decision to take on a challenge to create 29 original posts on 29 consecutive days – one for each day in February. To make the posting challenge easier (or more difficult), a topic was predetermined for each day of the month.
While browsing motorcycle blogs I stumbled across a reference to a challenge proposed by the author of Toadmama.com in a post titled Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge 2016. The challenge was offered as a way to cope with the motorcycle blogging doldrums of late winter:
Why is it that February, the shortest month, often feels the longest? Really. It always, ALWAYS takes forever to get through February. And this year, there are 29 days!
And so the blogging challenge came to life.
Sticks and Carrots
I respond best to the sticks. Forced goals and deadlines however arbitrary work for me. In art school I had to show up twice a week with new photographs. Quality and content didn’t matter – working mattered and showing up with new prints was the expected evidence. No matter how terrible the worked seemed the forced routine honed my creative muscle and sharpened my skills. I continued it for a long time with the 3 Prints Project — a personal challenge to expose and process two rolls of film every week and make three finished prints. I’m pondering another photographic challenge.
So taking on the blogging challenge seemed like a good investment.
Today’s theme, day 23: “Meaning behind your blog name”.
Scooter in the Sticks
The blog began like an easy sunrise without drama or turmoil.
The origins of the name – I had nothing to do with it. My wife Kim, in response to a question back in 2005:
What should I call this blog about my Vespa?
And without hesitation or thought, the words floated across her lips as if she was holding them for just this moment:
Scooter in the Sticks.
Kim lives amidst words. While writing this post she’s a few feet away holding three big books.
What are those?” I ask.
My synonym finders,” she says. “Well, one’s actually a rhyming dictionary”
Writers have those sorts of things. She is always writing, investigating, thinking. There are hundreds of journals stacked in the house with mysterious words and sentences, phrases and ideas. All things I’ll never see. Writers have their ways.
And from her mind sprang complete, “Scooter in the Sticks”. She did the hard part, she gave the gift.
The rest was up to me.
Good one, I’m hooked
You’re not hooked until you get a scooter or another motorcycle Mike!
It’s good to have a literate partner. While she had nothing to do with my Blog my Late wife was a reading Teacher and my inspiration to write. The written word was sacred to her and the creation of it was her gift to her students. It wasn’t just scribble on paper to her.
The problem with literate partners is they’re always calling you on your “stuff”!
Sticks work best for me, too. I’m a terrible procrastinator and like to do things according to my own schedule. Deadlines help wrangle the wandering mind. Yay for Kim, she picked the perfect name.
My husband is a reader, but not a writer. He CAN write, it’s just not something he’d ever do for fun. I can’t imagine having married a person who doesn’t “get” loving to read.
Procrastination has been a lifelong companion. Been trying to ditch him for decades. Just keeps coming around. A looming deadline keeps him quiet.
With the daily post I was starting to feel like a slacker…….. OK I am a slacker.
Come March 1 I’m taking a vacation!
Nice pictures of you and the Vespa Steve….
As to Kim being the source of the blog name…..kudos to your better half!
She is the better half!
My question of “why so many random posts” has been answered…and, a good answer at that. BTW, nice jacket and is that a Canon G around your neck? Stay well…bj
That was actually my old Canon G12. I worked through the G9 to the G12 to the G15 I have now. And I love those LL Bean barn jackets. Big pockets for lots of stuff.
Great portrait. Great snap of your M6, which reminds me that my Nikon P6000 is now on life-support, with nothing in the budget for a suitable replacement yet, so the film-based Contax Tvs, idle for over half a year, gets pressed back into service. Was planning that anyway, it’s just sooner than planned. My rangefinder system goes back into action sometime late spring.
I do love reading and writing. GF was an art teacher, and is a fine-art photographer, making her a great creative sparring partner, which is actually better than I’m making it sound here. Sounds like Kim really knows her stuff.
The Leica was a fine subject. Hard to make a bad picture of that camera. It has, as my friend Paul would describe, “Mojo”.
The people we associate with in life — partners, friends or otherwise, have a profound effect on our path I think. They do for me if I listen…