“Write of what you know,” Mrs Tipton told my tenth grade English class. But what I know is no longer useful to those who lead lives so startlingly different than my own. I know nothing of long marriages, but instead, ill-fated love. I don’t know about securing a career right out of college, and being compensated fairly. It is a mystery to me, the act of raising children, or having a healthy relationship with my parents. I can’t tell you the first thing about iPhones or popular television programs or streaming services. I couldn’t list five current celebrities if you held a gun to my head, or anything about winning sports teams. I haven’t a clue what’s trending in clothes, or how I should be applying eyeliner. I haven’t a clue about diets or workouts. I cannot do sums in my head or use a sewing machine.

But I know about true friends, and fake ones, too. I know what it’s like to travel alone, to a destination hundreds of miles away that I’ve never visited. I am well versed in sitting in a quiet house all day, flipping pages of a book and cooking a pasta dish from a recipe I stumbled across online. I understand how it feels to not want to get up and do it again but you have to, because there is no one to bail you out. I’m familiar with being on my knees, sobbing, crying out to the one who formed us, unable to form words or see a way through. I know what it’s like to be under appreciated and taken advantage of, to be expected to be at someone’s beck and call, even when they are not at yours. No one is perfect, and a sincere apology and promise to do better will set it right again. As long as there is effort and a willingness to accept they acted unfairly. I can tell you about the unparalleled loyalty of a dog, I can write for hours about these mountains I call home. I can wax nostalgic all day over the heat of a southern summer in Savannah. I can explain why being stubborn and not becoming complacent is preferable to getting comfortable. I can quote Gone With the Wind, Lonesome Dove, and nearly every episode of Friends and Designing Women. I can explain about nutritional values in horse feed, and coach you in buying a horse to suit your needs. I can instruct you in making many southern foods, and give you tips about fishing (don’t expect to catch anything and you’ll never be disappointed). I can teach you how to piddle.

Because piddling is what I’ve done for three solid days, with one short-lived bout of housework yesterday.

Piddling requires dedication and a lack of goal setting. One must commit to no deadline, or an expectation that any project will be completed. Even calling a task a project is frowned upon. Piddling is just something you find yourself doing, like cleaning out the junk drawer, or rearranging a shelf in the basement when you found two empty spray paint cans in with the bug killer. Piddling is slicing an onion and realizing how dull your knives are, so you stop making lunch to instead sharpen all the knives in the house. Piddling is picking up sticks in the yard that bleeds over into fixing the gate that hasn’t been quite right in some time, that leads to restacking that odds and ends pile of lumber in the corner of the garage. Or scraping wax out of pretty glass jars to use as vases or storage.

Ahhh, piddlin’. There is no end. It can be soothing if you’re of the right mindset. But this blog and my resolution is not for the piddlin’ type. It would be so much better if I wrote like somebody with some sense. I even piddle in my writing. I’ll start with one thing I want to say then get off on something else, and wind up talking about something else entirely. I remember writing a research paper my junior year. The outline was due like, two or three weeks before the paper. This was enough to send me into a tailspin. How was I supposed to write an outline? I didn’t know how it was gonna go till I got into the paper and saw how the tale was gonna fall out. I tried to explain this to the teacher, who tried reasoning with me that was the purpose of the outline, to keep me focused and on track. Have you ever tried reasoning with a 16 year old redhead? No, I don’t recommend it. As my memory serves, I loosely wrote my research paper in two days, and hammered out the outline from it. Then I coasted until the first draft was due.

So a piddlin’, procrastinating writer is what I am, who is loved by a dog, and who craves a good cheeseburger more than is normal for any forty-something lady.

Tomorrow is Monday, in case you forgot. I might have to stop for biscuits and gravy on my way in to soften the blow.

Love from Appalachia,

~Amy