Sunday, March 22, 2009

The Shabbos Phenomenon

My brother has a theory about shabbos. He says that mosquitoes have a special way of hanging around, in a maddeningly tantalizing manner, only on shabbos. He says that during the week, these little creatures know you will be killing them if they dawdle anywhere near your personal breathing space, and thus, they fly in and out of it at dizzying paces, avoiding certain death.
I think we can apply the same phenomenon to blogging. The best post ideas always occur to me on shabbos. This post is basically to inform you (hereby, forthwith, and all that stuff) that you are missing out on a truly excellent post. I am not just talking about the idea that was so good. But on Friday night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I wrote an entire post on this amazing, yet allusive topic. After I wrote it (in my head silly!) I realized that I was going to be forgetting the entire thing about 71 minutes after shekiah.
I actually forgot the post when the next post idea came to my mind, sometime the next morning (if my memory can be trusted, and it probably can, it was sometime in the five minute gap between when I woke up and when my father came home from shul and decided to make kiddush.) That post idea flew out of my head just as I was happily thinking of my next post idea, which was lost to society when the next one hit (which, I am pretty sure happened just after the seudah was over, as I was getting into my bed for my prolonged nap).
And it was not just this past shabbos. This is a weekly occurrence. For me, post ideas are like mosquitoes. They hang around tantalizingly all shabbos, and then, just as the third star materializes in the sky, they bid goodbye, much like the shabbos hamalka.
So basically, I'm here to say too bad. What a shame. You'll never know what it was.

Am I the only one who this happens to?

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

no, since i've started blogging (a few months ago) i think of things as in, "hey, this would be a good blog post!" or "i wonder what people in the blogosphere would think of this?"
it's so funny!!

chanie said...

No, it happens to me. All the time. And then after Shabbat I have the patience to blog only a fraction, or I read an email and my post content changes. I have a list of 40+ posts that I intend to write- most thought of on Shabbat or chag.

Mikeinmidwood said...

same here.

Anonymous said...

no. same with me. when i have to think up a song, or something. it always only accurs to me on shabbos, and you then forget it! what a shmae!

Something Different said...

TB- yeah me too. I was gonna write a post about it. ;)

Chanie, MIM, Anon: whew. I thought I was weird!

corner point said...

LOL!!!

No, I can't say the same for me. My post ideas don't strike that often. But I definitely hear your dilemma :-P

Something Different said...

CP- yeah it's awful. Maybe I should get that company-Kosher Innovations (the ones who make the shabbos lamp) to come up with a solution.
Some posts get salvaged, like this one: http://ablobofsomethingdifferent.blogspot.com/2008/12/sometimes-you-gotta-wait.html

But in general, my best writing happens on Shabbos... shame, eh?

Bas~Melech said...

Yeah, I have that. But the worst is the Shower Syndrome... oooh that hurts... if laptops were waterproof I might be posting daily...

nmf #7 said...

Happens to me all the time. But this past Shabbos, I actually remembered it afterwards :)
By the way- in my house, we used to call them 'Shabbos flies'- as they only showed up to bug us on Shabbos when we couldn't kill them. It's like they had an internal time clock or something!

Something Different said...

B~M: all your ideas go down the drain, huh? :-p
To date, I've written about ten great poems in the shower. I dunno what it is about showers that inspire poetry... ;)

NMF: I'm glad you remembered. :-) I like your name for em. Funny we never named the bugs themselves. We are very into naming things in my family.

Shorty said...

Oh my gosh...that happens to me all the time! My greatest ideas come to me...when i can't write them down :)