Parrot Nation

You know, you’d think writing would be a pretty cushy job. Not unlike looking at having parrots from the “non-parrot” perspective, that is people who never had a parrot will look at having a parrot in your life and think it would be easy.

People who look at writing and don’t do it on a regular basis will think that writing looks easy as well. They have the same qualities. However in order to write, you usually have to be seated.

Now, I”m all for sitting as my flying job requires me to do one hell of a lot of walking, shoving carts around, running up and down the aisle, and rotating suitcases in the overhead bins, or as we call it, “spinning bags.”

Long aisle to walk several dozen times a day

I’m also doing the mile long march to customs and immigration at least once a work day which, if you land and go to Gate 56 in Miami, you have to walk all those gates back to the terminal, cut over on a walkway to terminal E and then go through immigration. If you’re going back out, you have to reverse the process to get back to D; Take a walkway from E over to D at the front of the terminal, go back through security at Gate 22, and head off to your next flight at what will probably be gate 56 again. So yes, I like sitting.

People who don’t have parrots and don’t know what it takes to care for them will first of all observe that, “you don’t have to walk them.” While this is true, when my Greys get rocking in the morning, Parker is constantly trying to climb down his cage or get off his play stand and wander off. Pepper does likewise and so depending on their mood, my well-planned morning of sitting and writing is interrupted every five minutes by having to get up and chase down one grey or another. So there I am with the “having to walk” thing going again. Then there is the cleaning, the scrubbing, the vacuuming and the paper changing. In other words, there is far more to it than appears on the surface. You know that.

By the same token, writing is something that looks pretty cool. Relaxing, really. You sit in front of a laptop and wait for words to come. Problem is, if the words don’t come, or if the ideas don’t happen, you are still sitting in front of that computer, or pad of paper with nothing on it. It looks easier than it actually is.

And then of course, when you’re doing a lot of writing, you have those, “I don’t feel like it days.” You don’t want to write. You have a subject, you have ideas, but you just don’t feel like throwing your brain into “Lock and Load” mode to buckle down and “Git er done.”

For instance, I have all of the research, quotes and references for an article I’ve been intending to write for weeks. But I’ve been whiney about it. I don’t want to.  I don’t feel like it. Well, I can tell you this: I’ll probably feel like it when the electric bill comes in.

It’s the same with your birds. We hate the mess, so we clean it up. Having crumbs on the floor bugs me because I can see it out of the corner of my eye and it distracts me, so I get up and sweep or vacuum. Then when I sit down again to resume writing, I forgot my point. But I sure as hell have a clean floor.

And I’m always looking for a better way of doing things. Faster. More efficient. More thorough. I have an idea. And when I think it through, I’ll post it here.