Random Thoughts

I used my blog for my random thoughts. Somehow, Facebook took that away, imploring me to post an update every time I opened the website. This was before there was an app, and indeed, it was before I knew apps existed. I still had a Blackberry at the time. I might be out of practice with my random thinking but I'm going to give it the old college try.

Today I was ironing very tiny folds on my quilt seams, and I thought of the word painstaking, which is what it was. And it occurred to me that painstaking is not a combination of pain and staking, it's a combination of pains and taking. One is taking pains to do something in a particular way, usually the right way, or the hard way. This is a corny extension of my thinking: the opposite of taking is giving and the opposite of pain is joy, so something which is painstaking is also really joygiving, but we don't talk about endeavors that are joygiving. Ironing the tiny folds of my quilt square seams is both painstaking and joygiving.

The autocorrect function on this program doesn't even recognize the word "joygiving." That's how little it's thought about. I just added it to my dictionary so at least I can use it now. 

And while I am on the topic of joygiving

I wanted to send an email to an author of a book I recently enjoyed. I heard authors like to hear nice things from readers and I have thoughts about the book. I have been completely unable to find a way to send this person correspondence. I can't find an email address or a physical mailing address and their Twitter account doesn't allow direct messages. I could email his agent or publishing representative but that feels like it's the long way around when I just want to say something nice. Mean people have ruined avenues for joygiving with their shitty tweets and death threats.

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