It’s been a while since I’ve written a contentment diary entry. I feel content today. I feel like I’m being eaten alive by a thousand hungry catfish. Though that could just be a hundred unanswered emails. I feel content. I feel like I’ve been chewed up by a bear and spit out down a cliff. I feel good.
For those of you who might find that statement alarming and call to ask if I am okay, this is what’s known in the writerly business as hyperbole. Hyperbole with a touch of sarcasm–my favorite recipe.
I’m tuckered out. That’s basically what I have to say today for my attempt to illuminate the world for the sheer sake of completing 750 words in one day on my blog. Just to say I did.
It’s amazing some days how far 750 words can go. Indeed it is.
Have you ever seen catfish feeding? They do tend to swarm. You scoop up some pellets of fish food, toss them across a pond, and there are the hungry mouths suddenly working as hard as they can to gobble them all up. You toss the food out there, and even though you didn’t know the fish were even there before that moment, suddenly they are everywhere wanting more and more and more from you.
Sometimes you can toss words like fish food to the wind, and hungry mouths gather them where they can.
Sometimes you answer an email, and three more come back in its place. That’s why I’m tuckered out. I keep scooping my plastic cup into the email barrel, and I just can’t find the bottom.
But that’s okay. There will still be hungry fish in the pond tomorrow, and if they didn’t need me at all, I would miss them. I’m sure I would.
Meanwhile, someone who shares genetic material with me and does not want my mama to know he listens to trash like this has suggested a song to cheer me up.
There are days I am tempted to say a little prayer. I bet you will wonder what I do mean now when I say I am praying for you. I will wonder what you mean when you say the same to me.
But when I say I am saying a prayer for you what I mean is that I hope your hungry mouth is fed and your contentment diary can be filled without hyperbole and that you will always see the truth and the way, by which of course I mean what people always mean when they use words like this–my truth and my way.
Yes, when I say I am praying for you, I mean I hope you will feel good today, that you will give me all of the pleasure of your acquaintance and none of the aggravation. I mean I hope you will conquer your trials and temptations, particularly your temptations to be a drain on my day.
I’m praying for you. I really mean it. And at this point, if my mama is still reading, she is praying for me.
It’s amazing some days what 750 words can do.
