Lazy days of summer

Now that most of the bugs have left and I can enjoy my deck overlooking wetland and woods and a small sluggish river that wends its way past our place here in beautiful northwestern Wisconsin, I am wont to let things slide. Okay, I am wont to let things slide anyway. I have never had trouble relaxing. I count it as one of the great pleasures of living and a key to happiness. Relaxing, not letting things slide. Letting things slide can actually undermine relaxation. In the back of my mind there is a nagging spark, a synapse that keeps firing, telling me there is something else I should be going.

Blogging is what I should be doing today. But it is 68 degrees, a slight bit overcast, with just enough of a breeze to stir up the heady fragrance of pine, cut grass and sodden vegetation (one has to love the smell of sodden vegetation to live so close to a slow moving stream with stagnant backwaters)--the perfect conditions for taking a pillow out to the glider, or maybe hanging my Mexican string hammock between the poles of the clothesline, grabbing my half-read Richard Russo's The Risk Pool--man that man can write--and lolling away the better part of the day.

But I have work to do. I'm supposed to be blogging twice a week, a standard I set for myself so it is sometimes easy to let it slide. Too easy. Is it really so important to The Queue, the company I represent, that I blog regularly? Don't people already have enough to read without me asking them to pop in and see what I have to offer as an adjunct to our business--the business of helping writers improve their writing?

My goal for this blog is that it will become a place writers come to for information, inspiration and entertainment. I'd like to be able to provide a one stop timely source for what's coming up for writers in the way of conferences and contests--two months out so we have some time to plan. I'd like to provide information on the craft of writing and resources to help us improve our skills, stay motivated, find the right agent or publisher, find an audience, market our books ....

I'd like this blog to showcase short pieces of writing from my readers--excerpts, short poems, essays, lists, musings, whatever--to help inspire us to keep at it. Writing is its own reward.

And I'd like to entertain or to inspire writers to seek out entertainment. The playful, open and relaxed mind can not help but produce great and lovely ideas. All work and no play squeezes our minds into hard little rocks that rattle in our skulls when we move our heads!

Relaxing and reading on a lovely summer day is my entertainment. So really, I am obliged to let things slide once in awhile.

Luckily, with a good book and a good loll in the sun, I can shut off, for short times, that nagging spark at the back of my mind that interferes with my relaxation . Just the other day I let myself take half an hour to drift off to sleep on the glider in the sun, my book on the ground beside me, only to become aware of a wet canine tongue lapping at my nose. My sleep was so deep that I had to struggle awake. I walked around the entire yard looking for a dog that didn't exist before I realized the slobbering tongue was part of a dream. Hmm, I wonder ....

Relax, let things slide for a little while, you're allowed!!