The Daily Dose

Tonight, I cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye promise me, myself and I (and you, too) that I will spend less than 45 minutes writing (and editing) this off the cuff dose of The Daily Dose of the Good (and Not So Good) Words.

The reason for this obsession with time is that I am trying to create a sustainable practice of writing a dose every day, thus finally living up to hype of the name. The problem is that I’ll start writing and next thing I know hours have passed, and I have produced the passable prose that I pass on to you. This wouldn’t be a big deal ‘cept spreading the Good (and Not So Good) Words is not a profitable enterprise, and I am more than a little conflicted about any moves to make it profitable. I have to have time to earn my bread and butter, do my chores at The Bishop Family Compound, experience life (my own and others’, vicariously) and do enough reading and research to have something semi interesting-useful-entertaining to say.

Since I’ve given The Daily Dose its very own spot on the web in the form of an elegant Word Press blog on my still needs much improving website, it seems only the Spambots are “reading” the Good (and Not So Good) Words. This can be a mite discouraging. But I count my work on any particular Daily Dose worth it if only one person reads it and finds some small scrap of something to savor. That said, I salt my romantic idealism with more than a pinch of pragmatism. I want my time to be well spent. I know the spambots will love them no matter what. Some Daily Doses are marathons and take a long, long time to write (regardless of how long they take to read) and some are wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am’s.

The utopian vision that is seen but never quite reached is an important part of any dream worth its salt (I seem to be obsessed with the saline, though right now that isn’t a salient point). Sometimes, we let the pie in the sky fly in our eye, blinding us to the small tweaks and compromises we could make to make it (whatever it is) realizable. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Between the marathon and the quickie, I might find a Middle Path for most of these (e)Missionary missives.

And so I will continue to aspire. And so should you.

(Unless you are a spambot programmer, then you need to stop aspiring so much. I won’t mind the loss in my readership. Not one little bit).

I move closer and closer to my goal of writing and posting The Daily Dose of the Good (and Not So Good) Words daily. I am not there yet, but I am closer. And one of the things I have figured out along the way is that if I want to administer Daily Doses to y’all every dang day, I have to find ways to speed up my writing.

Generally, any given Daily Dose takes me quite a long while to write. I’m more than a little bit persnickety. And arranging and re-arranging words is one of my all time favorite things to do. Combine those two traits together and you’ll understand why it can take me way longer than an hour to write a Daily Dose, though it will leave you puzzled over how I still manage to make so many typos and spelling errors.

I have decided to speed up the production process so as to reach my goal of giving y’all The Daily Dose daily sometime this century. One or two times a week, I still will slow cook The Daily Doses, until the meat of the matter is tender and falling off the bone. But most days, I will mix up quick, breezy, strawberry daiquiris flavored Daily Doses. These doses will be more off the cuff, more improvisational, written in 45 minutes or less.

I will write a bunch of possible subjects/themes/topics for future Daily Doses on scraps of paper and drop them into a bowl or bag or some such, mix them up, and then on short and sweet helps the medicine go down Daily Dose days, I will pull the living in the future tense dose’s topic out of my hat, set my timer for 45 minutes and see what Good (and Not So Good) Words I can pull out of my ass.

I need help. Send me subjects, themes, topics, words, concepts, names of colors or objects or places or people, images, ideas, etc. It can be as broad a concept as “the economy” or as specific as “tax resisters tea party.” It can be as serious or silly. It can be political, religious, artistic, academic, sexual, social or some strange combination.

Send your grist for my mill by commenting on this post or by emailing me, TheBishop (at) bishopbishop (dot) com.

Take care and keep on keeping on.