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.