Life is ordinary, and that's ok

For Christmas I got a book. Well actually I got six of them, but one of them was titled "The Pocket Muse" by Monica Wood. Wood is a writing teacher and she compiled this book with random quotes, tips, pictures, and prompts to inspire creative writing. Thoughts float around in my head all day, so normally I have no trouble thinking of things to write about, but the book still is quite interesting.



Today I flipped to a page with with an interesting quote:

"My students were middle-class kids who were ashamed of their background. They felt like unless they grew up in poverty, they had nothing to write about...I felt sorry for these kids, that they thought their whole past was absolutely worthless because it was less than remarkable."

-David Sedaris, from an interview in January Magazine

The page ends with the prompt, "Write about a less-than-remarkable aspect of your life."



How interesting. With far-fetched bestsellers like Harry Potter and Twilight, and imaginative classics such as Fareinheit 451 and Frankenstein, it's only natural that we are attracted to tall tales of whimsical circumstances. However, we are also comfortable with our own familiarities. Maybe it's not so bad to celebrate our ordinary lives.



I may be bending the rules a little bit, but I was actually inspired to write this as I was looking back through my old posts. As typical, most of what I noticed was mistakes-typo here, misinformation there. Of course, I went back and corrected most of them, but some I just left because a "the" instead of a "to" is just not worth the effort. Most of the time however, I can't stand mistakes in my work. Yet mistakes could be what unites all humanity. We all make them, we all regret them, we all avoid them with ferocity.



I am going to celebrate them.



First of all, in my post titled, "And the winner is..." I originally said that there were 840 Heisman voters, 145 from six regions. If you're a critical reader, you will have noticed by now that 145 times six is 870, not 840. I knew that. I am math tutor!


In the same blog, I said that Colt McCoy was less likely to win the Heisman trophy because Sam Bradford (last year's winner) was from the same conference: the Big 10. This was a doozy. I hate the Big 10. Bradford plays for Oklahoma, McCoy for Texas, both teams in the Big 12. I would argue the Big 12 is one of the top three best conferences; I would argue the Big 10 is one of the worst! I sincerely apologize to fans of the Big 12 and hope to never make this mistake again.

Next, I noticed in "I Hope You Had the Time of Your Life," I made the statement, "Now I am fairly certain you are thinking, what does this have to do with the New Year?" If I saw this in a book, I would probably write the publishing company and the editors personally. First of all, the sentence as a whole is a statement, not a question, and therefore should not end with a question mark. Next I was not refering to the specific New Years holiday, and as a result, "New Year" should be "new year." And last, I probably should have set the interrogative part of the sentence apart in quotation marks. Next time I am about to correct someone's grammar, I am going to think of the epic failure that was this sentence.

The entire blog "Mixing Things Up a Bit..." was possibly the weirdest thing I have ever read. I promise I am not on drugs, but I do not know what inspired that. Once again, I apologize.

I could point out several other little missed commas or misplaced modifiers throughout my posts, but you get the picture.

I would venture to say that Peyton Manning's favorite thing to do is play football, but sometimes he throws an interception. Donald Trump probably enjoys his highly successful business ventures, but he sometimes get side tracked by pointless arguments with even more pointless celebrities. Brooks & Dunn are widely considered the greatest duo in country music, but I have heard a recording in which Kix Brooks sang the wrong words in "Place Something Country."

My point is all human beings make mistakes, sometimes critical ones. Some mistakes are no laughing matter, but if they're just a slip of the tongue or temporary lapse in brain activity, let's stop stressing about them. Laugh it off and move on.

Normally I would finish with a re-read of what I'd typed, a push of the spell check button, and a preview to make sure everything seems ok. Tonight, I am not going to do that. Tonight, if there are mistakes, I am going to celebrate them, because mistakes are inevitable, and mistakes are ordinary.

I hope your life is as ordinary as mine.