seven minutes

Todays' Blatherings is a WordGoddess collab. Our assignment was to "free-write" for exactly seven minutes. I'm intrigued by the idea of seeing how much I can write in that time with no particular topic in mind beforehand, so have set an alarm on my Palm.

So here goes...

So I've been using Grocery Gateway again, the online grocery service I tried for the first time several years ago when it first launched. I opted out of using it because I didn't like the user interface, and because I wanted to force myself to get outside more (it's sometimes tempting to fantasize about spending an entire day or several days or week just staying inside and seeing how much I can get done online...sort of like the Dot Com Guy, except now that I think about it, I seem to recall that the Dot Com Guy project ended up running out of money and the sponsors all pulling out).

Anyway, I've been pretty pleased with the service again...despite the fact that they've increased the delivery charge a tad, the user interface on the Web site has improved, they've added more products, and the delivery guys are just as charming. :-)

Had an interesting conversation with the delivery guy last time, though. He had delivered my grocery a couple times in a row so I suppose he felt he was getting to know me well enough to confide in me. My grocery delivery was slightly late that day (Grocery Gateway ended up waiving the delivery charge) and he wanted to explain why. Turns out he's been trying to quit smoking and hadn't noticed that his nicotine patch had fallen off during the night, so he started going through withdrawal during the day, with anxiety attacks. He said he almost quit his job.

But then he noticed the missing nicotine patch, bought a pack of cigarettes, starting smoking again, and he was fine. He told me he was planning to quit again as soon as he got home and had access to his nicotine patches again.

He also told me that he was pretty familiar with the whole substance-craving thing because he used to be a drug addict. Up to this point, I had been listening with an increasingly level of discomfort (I mean, even though he was a nice delivery guy, he was still a complete stranger and I just wanted to get back to my writing). As soon as he mentioned the drug addict stuff, I could hear warning bells going off in my head.

And part of me immediately felt bad. He was an EX-drug addict, after all, so had the strength to get off the drugs. But the paranoid part of me was suddenly aware that I was alone in the apartment and probably not as physically strong as the delivery guy. While these thoughts are going through my head, the ex-drug-addict almost-ex-smoker delivery guy is talking away about his life philosophy, and how hopeful he is about the future.

End of seven minutes.

I'm tempted to go back and edit, but I won't (except for adding a link to the Grocery Gateway). Hey, that was kind of fun. I usually do the free-writing thing every day, but never timed. Reminds me of the "Morning Page" exercise that Julia Cameron recommends in her book, "The Right To Write", except her focus is free-writing a certain output rather than timing.

For those reading my online comic strips, I've updated Waiting For Frodo and My Life In A Nutshell this morning.

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Today's Blatherpic:

Annie's hand after she and I had a skin-drawing session. I drew the star on her hand, but she did all the finger people. To parents: don't freak out, I used washable crayons meant for skin drawing. :-)