... a slow week or two at the mailbox ...
February 9, 1999
4:59 a.m.
I am one of those folks who gets desk calendars quite often for Christmas. You know, Dilbert, and Far Side, and whatnot. I've had one on my desk at work for at least the last three years. This christmas, I got four of them. So I have a "Dilbert" at work, a "Far Side" in my bedroom, and a "Horoscope" and a "Countdown to the Millennium" on my desk at home. Just call me date-rich. I don't know why I get these things, maybe its because I walk around all day looking like I don't have a clue. For whatever reason I get them, I also tend to keep the cartoons stashed away for a rainy day. This means I have stacks of single frame cartoons stuffed neatly into my right-hand desk drawer. I think there's two years of Dilbert and last year's Far Side classics tucked away down there. Now, a sane person might ask why I do that. ALL: That's right, Ron, why do you do that? The answer is, I don't know. But I do find a use for them occasionally. For example, the Bridge folks asked me to send them a soft copy of "Out of the Blue" so they could typeset it for the Writers of the Future anthology this year. So I copied it to a disk, and put it in a little disk mailer, and stuck the mailer into a slot in my binder so that I could drop it off at the post office at lunchtime that day. Before I left work, I pulled the mailer out and addressed it. Then I thought about the person on the other side, tearing open the mailer and digging their fingers down in there to get at the disk. What if, I thought, they were having a bad day, and could use a little cheering up--or, even better, what if they were having a good day, and just needed a little capper? I opened my desk drawer, pulled out a Far Side, wrote a quick note on the back, and slipped it into the mailer. Hopefully, it will make whoever opens it smile. But the act already served its purpose, because I felt good myself. Which, of course, is as good a reason as any for doing anything like that.   Things continue to move right along. I completed another new story--one I've had sitting on my To Be Rewritten pile for a few months, but hadn't gotten to. A second, "Goliath's Sling" is pretty much ready for its last pass. If I get time to put together a few envelops and manuscripts, I'll have more for the post office today. If not, it'll wait until tomorrow. Here's something interesting for those writers who are interested in how novels get hyped. Be good.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted." Aesop The Lion and the Mouse |
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