Coffee Share 180714

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

This is a Weekly Coffee Share update.
Our get-together is hosted by: Eclectic Alli.

Here’s the link for last week.

Here’s the link for this week.

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Coffee Club Summary: 

• • • Re: my surgery: I completed my 6th week post-op and am still pleased with my recovery progress.  Physical therapy continues and my therapist continues to playfully enjoy my current distress just enough to drop the occasional jab like, “you’re almost ready for a quick game of twister.”  I struggled with a clever retort. I’m 63 and married.  She’s maybe 38 and very charming, however, the unlikely image of her and I doing pretzel contortions and pounding large colored dots together – was not therapeutic. 
    • Re: real life work: My doctor just gave me permission to return to work (part time for a couple of weeks) next month.  The poor guy covering one of my accounts is apparently dying of overwhelm and has been asking about my return almost daily.  At least that one guy will more than welcome my return.
      
    • Re: My war with nature:  The gophers are in retreat.  One did manage to spring one of the traps without himself being caught
    • Re: My coexisting with nature: Several common alligator lizards have moved in.  They are very welcome because they gorge themselves on several small crawly things that I appreciate their populations being controlled without the use of toxins.  They’re pretty cool and frequently show off their pushup skills for me as I stroll the backyard.  Good chaps all of them.  I do worry about them meeting the neighborhood feral cat, but they are great to watch and try not to disturb.
      
    • Re: writing; there were simply too many domestic distractions this last week and I fell short on my writing goals.  My daughter managed to rear-end a pickup truck with a heavy trailer hitch which punched it’s way through the front of our otherwise nice looking Honda Accord.  This led to a visit to the repair guy which lead to an unexpected 5K-US$ estimate.  [heavy sigh. . .]
    • Re: Covert working:  Every quarter, I have a unique writing project at work that goes out to just over 300 of our largest customers worldwide.  It is driven by the quarterly set of software security patches for our products, and the calendar for this release is announced 12 months in advance, so there was no requesting them to postpone the release for my surgery.  The customers expect my analysis to arrive within about 3-4 days of the release and, while I have a small team of folks learning how to do this analysis, none of them is ready to do one themselves yet, so I’ve selected the best of the batch, a gal who used to work for me in Colorado, to run the creation and distribution next week with the hopes that: (1) She can do most of it herself after I get her started on each stage and (2) I don’t get caught sneaking back into the work force and upset the folks paying my short-term disability payments.

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Greetings all,  I hope you can sit back, enjoy a nice cup of either this medium roast – faintly hazelnut cream flavored coffee or this rich, dark Darjeeling tea that just arrived.  Both are wonderful in this high gray overcast kind of day.  It’s insulating us from the higher temperatures that we would otherwise be suffering.  I also have a nice nut and berry wheat bread that toasts us to perfection and [I think] is best enjoyed with a generous layer of cream cheese.  Come-on, admit it.  Doesn’t this sound positively civil and relaxing?

With my immanent return to real work, I’m already fretting about losing the daily several hours I’ve been starting my day with – enjoying slowly reading to satiation and then puttering around and doing my Physical Therapy exercises.  I’ve been able to relax and do the outdoor chores of minimal yard maintenance and running errands without the need to hurry every step of every day until I crawl across the finish line of Friday and try to calm down most of Saturday.

I have not however met my writing goals.  It seems that this side of my brain only works in waves and after a couple of good stories polished and posted, this gray matter needs some time away from content creation.  It’s either this or my discipline is completely broken by this medical leave business.

I am tempted, going forward to establish something of a different balance of how each 10 minute story is framed.  Most of my existing collection are just for fun.  They use a rowdy first-person voice to weave vivid fun images that put my reader there along side of the players of each event.

Two of my most recent stories picked up a different tone, where there was something of a message mixed with a lower degree of humor.  Both: The Most Audacious Birthday Gift and Jacquie’s Story were very well received and commented on (mostly in Facebook world where, sadly, feedback is quickly lost) so I’m allowing myself to begin to think about allowing future essays to mature in similar veins.

I think there is a more limited appetite for overtly humorous essays as compared to ones with an important message of some kind.  I think those messages that are nicely wrapped in a real-life story can be the most compelling.

What do you think?  If the essay stays shorter than 10 minutes (2000 words) would you prefer: 100% humor,  75% humor with a minor theme of a compelling or heart warming message, 25% or less humor with a strong, well developed and compelling message.  Perhaps, you would prefer to lobby for 100% serious-ness and cause-you-to-think ideas.

Thanks for any response you care to offer.  I think I know which way I’m leaning, but there are some very talented minds sharing coffee around this virtual table and I’d love to tap this topic with you.

Thanks also for stopping by.  I’ll be checking back to review your coffee share for the weekend.  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and next week.

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