I’m a fickle reader.

I don’t mean that I can’t finish a book, or that I ever stop reading.

What I mean is that I no longer have a “favorite” genre, or author, or type of book, or series, or… well, anything.

Ask me today what I want to read and then ask me again tomorrow, and you’ll get a different answer. My genre loyalties shift with the wind, and my non-fiction topical preferences change depending on anything from how much sleep I’ve had to whether I’m hungry to the number of pages in the book.

I didn’t used to be this way! I used to be able to say, “oh, I don’t read romance” or “the classics don’t interest me” or “economics? no, thanks!”

Well, thanks to Librarything.com and particularly the Talk group I’ve been a part of for the past five (six?) years, it turns out there are just TOO MANY amazing books out there in areas I thought I didn’t read.

So, yes. I’m a fickle reader. It makes figuring out what to read next a little paralyzing sometimes, because there’s almost too much choice.

Not that I’m complaining.

Who, me?!

…couldn’t be.

Oh, man. We all know that person.

The one who, no matter how many times you try to have a conversation with someone else… or if you’re a teacher, when you try to get your class underway… shouts out loud some inane comment or puts their hand up and waves it around so much you can’t avoid them.

Or, sometimes worse in this day and age, the person who posts idiotic things on your Facebook wall underneath genuine statements or status updates. Or who posts ads in your industry-specific group just because their event or news is vaguely related to your group’s interests. Or maybe they met you once.

Yeah. I may be a little annoyed this morning.

Look, it’s important to give people the benefit of the doubt. Everyone has a story of their own, and we don’t know—most of the time, anyway—if that person means to be disruptive or if they just lack social awareness.

But I want to tie this into writing, so here goes: If you’re writing and you find that “one of those people” keeps shouting at you in your head and won’t shut up… it might be worth a listen.

Give your subconscious the benefit of the doubt. You may learn something fantastic, or that disruptive voice shouting at you might actually have the idea you’ve been waiting for to make your plot or story sing.

Or it’ll be total crap and make you slightly crazy.

Either way, you’re a writer, so it won’t make you any worse off in the end regardless.

The more I live, the more I realize that we need to be challenged to be able to thrive.

It’s easy to get comfortable with the status quo… get up, work, come home and eat dinner, sleep, do it again. Hobby A is done at this time, hobby B at that time. Family on Sundays. Check emails twice a day (or if you’re me, seventy billion times).

We need to find the challenge in this routine and tackle it. Barney Stinson, love him or hate him, has a fantastic catchphrase (well, he has a few, but there’s one that applies here):

Challenge accepted.

“You can’t bungee jump, you’re afraid of heights!” Challenge accepted.

“Baking a souffle is frelling impossible.” Challenge accepted.

“There’s no way I could get a new job with my qualifications, even though the one I have is killing me.” Challenge accepted.

What have you been telling yourself is impossible or impractical or just not realistic because it doesn’t fit into the “status quo” of your life? And if those things would make you a happier, healthier, more whole person… why not just accept the challenge and go for it?

At the end of your life, do you want to say “man, I’m really glad I stuck with my easy, boring 9-5 at the paper factory even though it felt like it sucked the life out of me some days” or do you want to say “I’m so glad I took a chance on my dream job as a widget entrepreneur, even though it didn’t pay as well… but I sure had fun doing it despite the hard times.”

We only get one shot at this thing called life. Why not accept more challenges and make the most of it?

We’re all broken in one way or another.

Even if you don’t believe in God, or if you’re of another faith, it’s hard to argue that the human race isn’t living up to its potential. We’re not whole, we’re not complete.

The news lets us know that every single day. We’re broken people, some of us more shattered than others.

The good news is that we don’t need to be broken forever. We can pick ourselves up and put the pieces back together… heck, we can help others put their pieces back together, and probably find that we’re more whole after doing so than we were when we tried to do it ourselves.

You know that speech a flight attendant gives about helping someone with their oxygen mask in an emergency only after you’ve secured yours? That doesn’t apply here. In real life, helping someone secure their pieces can often help yours fall right into place.

The world wants us to believe that it’s too late. That things aren’t fixable.

But really, it only takes one piece at a time. Patiently. Slowly.

Brokenness doesn’t have to be permanent.

The sad thing is, it seems that a lot of people believe otherwise.

So… I missed the sign-up for the A to Z Challenge, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, considering the lack of blog posts. Basically, I’ve left this blog for dead more times than Lindsay Lohan has been busted for DUIs, and it was really only last April that I came out of the woodwork to post regularly.

And now that the sign-up for A to Z is closed, why bother?

Well, that’s where the “a is for asinine” comes in. I’d like to put more posts up for the sake of posting – and if they’re just here for me to read, cool. If someone else stumbles across them, welcome!

I have a number of projects underway at the moment, so writing these posts will *hopefully* be a bit of a break from the slew I’m wading through at the moment.

So, who else is embarking on an asinine adventure this month? Or this year?

Who wants to join me in the loony bin? It’s kind of nice here…