Butterfly Mind

Salt

November 3rd, 2015

Salt on my lips when I sweat. A crust of salt on my skin when I swim, SCUBA dive, snorkel. Salt makes my eyelashes stick together, and my skin feel dry and tight, and when I open my mouth underwater, I taste the brine. Salt water stings the inner membranes of my nose if too much goes in it, drawing water to my eyes.

Salt is earth. It is flavor. It is crystal. It is crust.

Salt is foundation.

Salt is strong and vital, sold and earthy. And we eat it. We eat earth. And we want more. “Worth his salt.” Doesn’t that come from back in the days when salt was more valuable than gold?

I love thinking about consumables being precious. Not because they were rare, but because food was valued. Saffron. Spices. Salt. Do we value food anymore? Most of it is so cheap I feel like we don’t. Of course, that’s the McDonald’s aspect of food I’m talking about. Fine dining still exists, thank heavens.

But Salt. I like it on my skin. I like it in the sea. I like it in the air so I can smell it. I like it in my sweets to balance the sugar. I like pouring it into bowls, coarse sea salt especially, though Kosher will do.

There has been a gourmet salt thing recently — whole shops dedicated to pink, white, black salts. I wonder if the flavor differences are that noticeable? Or maybe it’s not just flavor but aftertaste, or compatibility with other flavors, or structure, or aesthetic. I’ve never tried a specialty salt. All of our salts are white: baking salt, fine and iodized and in a cylindrical canister; Kosher salt in a heavy box with a spout; coarse sea salt, also in a canister, though smaller and with one of those annoying plastic dispensers on top where you spin the lid to create different openings.

For the month of November, I will be participating in NaBloPoMo and plan to publish every day of the month. Usually, I will publish a 10-minute free write, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Follow along with the tag #NovemberDaily.
Derelict

November 2nd, 2015

Oh boy. This must be a prompt a reader left for me. I don’t know the meaning of the word “derelict.” It sounds like it should mean shabby or abandoned, like a crumbling house with broken windows, a porch that’s caved in, boards falling off the exterior. A derelict house would have once been smooth and honey brown with the color of fresh wood, but in it’s abandoned state would be grey and splintered.

Like a haunted house. The thing with haunted houses though, is that they are not truly derelict, if derelict means what I think it means. A haunted house is abandoned by the living, but not by the dead.

Growing up in Savannah, Georgia, I did a report for school on the haunted houses of our town. My friend and I borrowed a video camera and interviewed the owners of some of the stately old houses of Savannah — historical homes downtown on the squares, and the Victorian columned homes on Victory Drive. We interviewed the owners and asked them to tell us ghost stories.

The only one I remember is one on azalea-lined Victory Drive. A kind elderly woman walked us through the rooms of the house, telling us strange hauntings that had happened in each. The room I remember was a bedroom. The walls were plaster and were painted a soft color — a subtle mint or a pale blue — and the gentlewoman told us of footprints on the ceiling. The room was for visitors, and guests had awoken in that fluffy bed, looked up, and seen impressions of shoes indenting the solid white ceiling. The footprints moved as if two people were dancing.

I loved that story. It didn’t seem scary at the time, but it was daylight and there was no dancing on the ceiling.

So is a haunted house derelict? I don’t know. I don’t know if even an abandoned house is derelict. I think I need to look it up.

*Derelict does mean abandoned. Score! Thank you to LRose for the prompt.

For the month of November, I will be participating in NaBloPoMo and plan to publish every day of the month. Usually, I will publish a 10-minute free write, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Follow along with the tag #NovemberDaily.
Morning was quiet. And then it was not.

November 1st, 2015

It is 6:30 AM. It used to be that our house was silent this time of day. I’d get up and write while everyone else slept. I’d make coffee. Listen to the house creak. Listen to my pen scratch across the page in the quiet.

Now, our son, my husband, and myself are all up at 6 AM. We bump into each other in the kitchen while our son sleepwalks through toasting his waffles and packing his lunch, while I try to unload the dishwasher and make coffee, while my husband makes his tea and pours his cereal. Instead of silence I hear silverware clanking, toaster beeping, kettle whistling, refrigerator squeaking, our son singing to the kittens, the kittens meowing, and the trample of kitten feet as they race down the hardwood hall and slam into walls.

6 AM is not a quiet time anymore. Today I sat down in our cozy living room chair to write, but with all the activity, I knew I’d not be able to concentrate.

For the first time since me moved into our new house, for the first time since I painted my key lime ~~studio~~ office, I am writing in a room of my own. Until today, the café table in my office served as a horizontal surface for accumulating detritis: cords, keyboards, headphones, ipod, bills that need to be paid.

Today I cleared it.

I sit now at my clean, round table. I hear the hum of the basement dehumidifier, the muted sounds of chairs scraping upstairs, the rattle of the spring in my pen. On my table are a Krispy Kreme candle, a book of matches, a cup of ice water, my prompt box, timer, and composition book, and my wrist as it swiffs across paper and smooth red wood.

For the month of November, I will be participating in NaBloPoMo and plan to publish every day of the month. Usually, I will publish a 10-minute free write, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Follow along with the tag #NovemberDaily.
Could blogging be my real work?

October 31st, 2015

I’ve heard in writerly circles that when you are going deep into your craft, you can expect the first two years to be your purge time. Your detox. Your cleanse. That during those two years you’ll write and write and write, and you’ll unclog the arteries, and you’ll get the gunk out, and then your real work can flow.

It’s been four years for me, and I’m still getting the gunk out. I think about what I used to consider to be the “real” work: the pieces I’m revising for submission. The ones collecting dust in that plastic stackable letter tray. The ones I’m not working on because I don’t want to send them off for someone else to approve. That’s not the work I want to do. That’s not what I choose to fill my free time with. The “real” work is not what I turn to when I have free time on a Saturday. What I turn to is my blogs.

So I’m kind of wondering. Could it be that blogging is my real writing work? Seeing as how I’ve got a piece that’s been awaiting revisions and submission for over a year, I think it is safe to say, Yes. Blogging is my real writing work.

And with that, I’m officially committing to NaBloPoMo: National Blog Posting Month. Every day during the month of November, I will publish a blog post. I’ve got my prompts. I’ve got my laptop. I’m ready.
It’s happening: I am speaking at WordCamp US!

October 29th, 2015

I’ve been waiting like what feels like an eternity to share this publicly, and the time has finally come. I am thrilled to announce that I will be speaking at the inaugural WordCamp US to be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December 4-6 this year. Look, my picture is even on the website:

I’m somebody now!

A WordCamp is a conference that focuses on all things WordPress: from developing and designing WordPress to using the software as a blogger. I am honored to be a part of this event, and I cannot wait to spend time with and learn from the stellar lineup of speakers. My talk is “Publish in 10 Minutes Per Day.” Look for details here on Butterfly Mind when WCUS arrives, or better yet, get yourself a ticket and join us in Philly.
I ran a 5k solo, but with others

October 26th, 2015

http://me.sh/19texorv

Solo but with others is kind the story of my life right now. As an employee of a distributed company, with teammates all over the world, I am physically alone in my home office, but am mentally together with people all day long. I chatter online at with customers from around the world and with colleagues in California, Florida, Texas, Washington, Canada, Wales, Sweden, England, Austria, Brazil, Malaysia, Australia…

I never feel alone, even though I am the only one in the room.

The same is true of my experience running the annual Worldwide WordPress 5k this year: I could have run a 5K in real life with my co-workers last week at our annual meeting in Utah, but I, um, didn’t.

Instead, I am taking the opportunity to join the worldwide WordPress community in running a 5K together this week — virtually — just like I join my coworkers every day. Starting today and going through November 1, members of the WordPress community will be running, walking, or crawling their own 5Ks and documenting their journeys on blogs using the tag WWWP5k. If you’d like to join, please do! You can find more details in the Automattic Worldwide WP 5K 2015 post on our news blog, Hot Off the Press.

My personal 5K journey was a quiet autumn one — my favorite kind. The air was crisp, and the gold and ruby colored leaves shone brilliant against a grey sky. The hills around here kill my legs and my lungs, but the views of the mountain sides are worth it.

Salt

Derelict

Morning was quiet. And then it was not.

Could blogging be my real work?

It’s happening: I am speaking at WordCamp US!

I ran a 5k solo, but with others