I know I need to write more regularly, and lately I’ve been drawing blanks on anything to say, which makes writing a bit more of a slog, so I’m trying something new and responding to the “Daily Writing Prompt” on the WordPress home screen. I think I encountered this once before but instead of the home screen it was hidden as the first line when I opened a draft post, and it was something that read with supercilious overtones like, “Where do you need to improve yourself?” or something, like my own website was judging me. Or maybe I’m just paranoid. The prompt now has a more prominent and clearly labeled home, and since I’m still not sure what to write, I guess we find ourselves here.
The prompt today is, “Was today typical?” which really feels like a rewording of my blog’s “what are you doing?” theme. Today is only half over, but so far, it has been pretty typical with our usual breakfast routine, an uneventful walk through the neighborhood, and some time at the gym. As per uzsh (how the hell is that meant to be spelled, the shortened version of ‘usual’? It can’t be ‘use,’ that’s already a word and doesn’t convey the weird sound the s needs to make. ‘Yoozh’? That bears no linguistic similarity to its root. I can’t win), I couldn’t think of anything compelling to write about. That typically leads to bizarre ramblings like the out of control parenthetical we just encountered. So that’s pretty typical too, I guess. For me, anyway.
I did cut my hair today, which is a pretty irregular occurrence. The lockdown at the beginning of the pandemic gave me the courage to try cutting my own hair and for better or worse I’ve been doing it myself ever since. I’ve never really liked going to the salon; in addition to the inescapable small talk, I frequently found myself telling the stylist that I was very happy with her work, only to go home and hack away at it more with my own scissors, because I’m bad at confrontation and have low self-esteem. (“Does she think I came in looking this ugly? Maybe it’s not the haircut; maybe I just am this ugly.”) I know cutting and styling hair takes a lot of skill, and stylists absolutely deserve to be paid for their work, but I also have trouble justifying the cost. I don’t color my hair. I’ve only had five or six hairstyles in my entire 35 years of life, and I wear my hair long. Most of the time when my hair needs “cut,” I actually just need a trim, and $50 seems like a lot to spend on that. I used to try and go to beauty schools, which cost far less, but yield less reliable results since I never got the same student twice and they’re still, well, students. And regardless of where I go or how much I spend or how happy I am with the results two things are always constant: 1) no one notices anyway (three inches off long hair is still long hair), and 2) I have to deal with the stink of industrial shampoo chemicals for three days (seriously, what is that smell, why is it in all the salon shampoos, and why does it take so long to wash out?). So I cut my own hair today. It’s not especially great, but I don’t think it has that typical “I cut my own hair!” look to it (you know the look I mean), and it was free and I got to use my own shampoo, and didn’t have to make small talk with anyone.
That was atypical for most days, but still a typical, albeit occasional, experience for me. I suppose after I post this, I ought to check out some of the other responses to the prompt, which will lead me to read some blogs I’ve never visited before, which isn’t very typical for me. Hopefully I’ll find some fun reads.
But then I’ll cook dinner and watch some TV and maybe play some video games before bed, all of which are very typical ingredients of my days.
It is quite hot today, which is both typical and not. On the one hand, it’s the beginning of August, which is, typically, pretty balmy in these parts. We’re still in the midst of a streak of days where the high temperature is 100 degrees, plus or minus 4, which is hotter than it should be (or hotter than is typical, especially for so long), but with climate change it’s becoming more typical.
And, like typical, I’ve run out of things to talk about but I can’t find a good way to wrap this up into a nice satisfying ending. Typical.