Hey there! Casual Rambler here, just wanting to thank you for reading my blog. I try to avoid marketing myself and I don’t like paywalling content. That’s why most of this website, if not all, is free. However, subscribing to my Patreon helps me keep doing it. Patrons gain exclusive early access to poetry & other creative works. Thanks again and please enjoy the rest of the site!
I have made a change.
Unfortunately, my truly beloved AusRoyal 9400 is [in] need of repairs since its return from SOAK. The carriage struggles to shuffle as I type & the ribbon is even worse, tearing itself as it too struggles to shuffle.
*Sigh*
I’m choosing to believe this is all easily reparable & will be visiting Ace Typewriter in St. Johns to wsee what can be done.
In the meantime, I’m ecstatic that I can start to give my original typing machine (because of I would have two) some shine. This is the Olivetti-Underwood Studio 44 from 1952. Though nominally portable (with its own carrying case, no less), this machine is an absolute tank & a large part of why my arms have concept of a bicep. However, the typeface is as lovely as it is legible & it is the machine with which I fell in love before any other.
It has seen other firsts as well:
- It’s the typewriter I first started writing short stories with (as well as creative essays).
- It’s the machine with which I debuted the pasta stand. Thus, it’s long past time I started writing Casual Rambles with this delightful & sturdy piece of kit.
The only issue is that I will be running out of paper even faster due to the size of the typeface. The things we do for love…
But this is not the only change.
If you have followed the Casual Ramble for a while, you might be very aware of my struggles with an eclectic mind.
*cough*ADHD*cough*
I have never been one much for labels since transformative experience in my early twenties that [saw] me reject labels outright for sexuality & has since slowly crept into other facets of identity, if not states of consciousness & perception. These days when someone asks me how I “have been doing,” I respond with a simple statement, “I, Ben.”
Not to be pithy, (okay, a little bit to be pithy,) but to be brutally honest & to open up conversations from what it means to “be.” Be it joy or struggle.
One of those struggles I often endure is an inability to manage to-do lists, much less even make them or complete them. Part of this arises from anti-authoritarian reflexes, part of this arises from a struggle to truly compartmentalize tasks according to priorities.
For the longest time I have tried to work through these issues through lip-service to discipline. That I could just force myself to focus. Instead, I just found myself imposing a sense of shame upon lack of progress & giving myself decreasing amounts of grace or space to achieve my goals.
Try as I might to reframe my tasks from have-tos to get-tos, nothing really stuck.
That was until I made a connection this year at SOAK in the dying hours of Sunday night. From this connection I learned an ingenious little trick for to-do lists: play Bingo.
Rather than wrap up all the tasks, chores, errands & other activities into a single day or weekend list, play a game. Introduce a bit of joy into the equation & render it egalitarian. Yes, the laundry is important. But it’s just as important as making time for firends, visiting family, working on your creative projects & so on, so forth.
I can happily report that the pilot attempt was greatly successful despite the lack of poems published on the Casual Ramble Patreon. My mind was markedly clearer, I was able to focus on writing poetry, reconnect with my flow instruments & friends & still finish my chores. All in all, a launching pad to success.
And now, in the lead-up to Oregon Country Fair, I get to play again.
What a gift. What excitement to find something not only effective, but hopeful in its application. And I suppose this to be the last change I am actively making: to chooswe to see these things as gifts, positive or negative.
Don’t misunderstand me; I still become irritated, I still allows myself to feel the emotions. But I am using my time & writings to move beyond them. Not because I have to, but precisely because I get to.
In the meantime, however, I get to work on a poetry drop for the blog to be shared on Thursday as well as endeavour to publish a poem every day on the Patreon before I go down to my favourite place on the face of the Earth: Veneta, Oregon.
Forgive me if it takes a few days to get back on it next week, though. Sometimes the gifts require a time to recover.
Ramble on,
–The Casual Rambler
Thanks again to my lovely Patrons: Jenny, Julie, Roshi, Zero & Phil, as well as all my Casual Ramblers for your support. If you would like to join the Casual Ramble for early access to poems, short films & the like, subscribe via the link below!
The Casual Ramble 