{"id":306,"date":"2005-03-06T19:38:30","date_gmt":"2005-03-06T17:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/wordpress\/?p=306"},"modified":"2005-03-06T19:38:30","modified_gmt":"2005-03-06T17:38:30","slug":"excuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=306","title":{"rendered":"Excuses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m very good at excuses. I remember, in school (and that was a while back) making the excuse that I would wait until I got a computer until I wrote my novel. Then it was till I finished studying (IT). Then until I finished travelling. Then I decided to study English and Philosophy and learn from the masters. Unfortunately reading the greats humbled me, and put me off writing for a while, and then I got a job, and my excuse became that I was too busy.<\/p>\n<p>Well, 9 years later, from April I&#8217;ll have no job. I&#8217;ll have done more than my fair share of studying, will have a computer, a laptop even, and I&#8217;ll make sure it gives me more than the current 3\/4 hours I get on this one so that I can sit on top of the mountain and feel inspired. And yes, I can carry it up the mountain.<\/p>\n<p>However, the looming excuse is that I don&#8217;t have anything I want to say that badly. My school novel would have been a Douglas Adams style comic science-fiction. Then a Storm Constantine-like epic, followed by some William Blake\/David Zindell spiritual science-fiction, a wild Kerouac\/Ginsberg-like road trip, or some equally wild (and unintelligible) poetry.<\/p>\n<p>The mind is never more creative than when it&#8217;s being lazy. Full of energy, I start to meditate, only to begin yawning and thinking how urgent it is that I paint the porch, or wash the car, neither of which I&#8217;d have conceived of doing without the aid of meditation. Of course should I stop meditating, I&#8217;d soon be slouched on the couch doing something worthy like reading the press releases that pass for journalism in the daily newspaper, or watching the drek on TV. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve changed a lot since I began my first novel. So much of what I would have wanted to say I can&#8217;t say anymore, as I&#8217;m no longer the same person. But I have no regrets, and it will be interesting, come April, to see what I do with all that time. I&#8217;ve promised myself that I&#8217;ll only do things I&#8217;m passionate about. Already I have too many choices, like a child in front of Cape Town&#8217;s best ice cream parlour (in Camps Bay).<\/p>\n<p>This whole post, by the way, was prompted by the excuse that I haven&#8217;t posted to my blog since the 1st, a perfect opportunity to escape the minor programming work I&#8217;m doing, that&#8217;s due tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m very good at excuses. I remember, in school (and that was a while back) making the excuse that I would wait until I got a computer until I wrote my novel. Then it was till I finished studying (IT). Then until I finished travelling. Then I decided to study English and Philosophy and learn&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=306\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Excuses<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-water-personal","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}