For starters, I am back to lists. Clearly I do not do well with time organization without some sort of cueing system. I am one to quickly fall into whatever I am doing and as of late that has been Apex Legends. No, not even Minecraft. I can definitely balance out the activities if I have a daily list of what I need to do. As a bonus, adding and starting the day with a workout tends to make this situation work better for me. I know this: I need to be writing more and getting back in shape, so those are the priorities at the top of my list on a daily basis.
Okay… maybe I haven’t been entirely about the writing lately. Why? Well, I cannot really say for certain, but part of it is not fully being able to process the situation going on around me in a way that serves for fictionalization or any paralleling in story outside of the ‘now’ and that feels problematic because we are all too close to it right now.
And it keeps piling on.
These things come in threes. Well, there it is. There is the fictionalization. I read that phrase early in life and now I think it could be the doorway to a story that captures some basic understanding of the situation happening outside my door. By that I mean to write (tomorrow?) a story imagining the 3rd thing to happen. We have the Covid-19 problem. We have the murder of a black man for little more than passing a bad $20 (not to mention all of the others that lined up before it like dominos waiting for the resolve of the establishment to topple beneath their fall). What could a 3rd thing be?
In the article, “Is Afrofuturism the Answer to our Current Crisis?” the author writes, “There is an urgent need among black folks to imagine ourselves in the future.” I accept that specific challenge with the earlier phrase as my lead prompt. These things come in threes. Perhaps this is the week of threes, with each prompt a different story imagining the 3rd wave of trouble hitting home for black people.
It isn’t actually going to change anything, but at least it can be the beginning of a conversation about what is happening to us.