Recently I upped my swimming time from 40 minutes to 45. Now, that’s a good thing–increasing my workout length–right? But, the reason I did it was because, when people would ask me how long I swim, I’d say “40 minutes,” but they’d hear and remember “45 minutes,” and it sort of just seemed easier to do 45 minutes and say that.
Which made me think about times in the past when I’ve done constructive or useful or good things for stupid reasons.
Like when I chose Rhetoric as a major at UC Berkeley, which was a fabulous major–it taught me how to read and to write and to think–but I only discovered Rhetoric in the first place because the lines for pre-registration for English 1A were super-long and the lines for Rhetoric 1A (which satisfied the same requirement) were nice and short.
Or when I read a witch novel that was fabulous and engaging…until the ending, which was so disappointing I thought, I can do better than that, and I started writing the first round of the Callie novels, and began taking my writing seriously. (No, I won’t tell you what the disappointing novel was!)
Life’s little turns on the road…fascinating. You never know how a seemingly small decision is going to unfold.
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In other news, I’m learning to make soups. Starting simply–not making my own stocks yet (that’ll come, in time), but experimenting with recipes. Tonight I made a black bean-chorizo-mole sort of thing–almost more a chili than a soup, and YUM!!
In other-other news, DO NOT EVER read the ingredients on chorizo.