Readin', Bloggin', Studyin' and Thinkin'

Reading ~ I'm a voracious reader. I've been reading since I was three-and-a-half-years-old. My mother used to call me a 'wonder child' because there wasn't anything I couldn't read. I learned to read in pre-school, and one day on the way home from school, I shouted out the 'F'-word. Mom nearly had a stroke. She pulled over the car and asked in a stern voice, "Where did you learn that word?" to which I replied, "That word is drawn on the wall back there." I could, and did, and still do, read everything.

Mom thought I was on my way to genius. But alas, now she often asks, "What the hell happened to you?!"

So reading, the current interests: whipped through 'The Mystery of Perfume' by Rita Schnitzer in about a minute and a half. Three minutes to get through 'La Dolce Vita Perfume'. 'The Idiots Guide to the French Language' is in the bathroom -- I'm on chapter two. Started the graphic novel '30 Days of Night' after having seen the movie. The book versions are always so much better than the movies -- and I'm a shameless vampire buff. I occasionally open 'Cool Gardens' by Serj Tankian -- inspiring and sad. The style is much like William Saroyan's 'Daring Young Man . . .' -- so very, very sad and real. Except that Tankian's is poetry and he uses the 'C'-word, and Saroyan's is prose and uses sexual innuendo. Just started 'The Roots of Romanticism' by Isaiah Berlin (this is where the thinkin' comes in). The 'Global Cosmetic Industry' magazine is still sitting on my reading stack, unread and lonely. It's one of those 'get to' things. I'll get to it later. Also started reading a piece of fiction called 'Immortal' by Traci L. Slatton. The fiction books are my escapes. The most tragic thing I've read lately is the article in the January 2008 edition of Vanity Fair about the double-suicides of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake. I remember reading Theresa's blog, The Wit of the Staircase, and thinking this woman is so brilliant and talented, if not a little odd. Then it was over.

So the reading bit is covered.

Blogging ~ I've got two blogs. This one and one for raw food. Yeah, I'm a struggling raw foodist. Struggling. Really struggling. Ha! Someone recently told me to stop blogging and start putting all this perfumery stuff on another project I have going on, Le Parfumeur Rebelle. I just can't. I don't feel that LPR is just mine. There are other, much more talented people behind the curtain on that project whose voices must, and will, be heard -- soon. So watch for it. Blogging -- the raw food blog has lain dormant for a while. When I'm not being strictly raw, I feel like such a hypocrite writing about it there. I've got my mother going raw, one of my cousins, one of my sons, a few cyber friends -- I mean these people are inspired by me and I'm not even doing it right! Did I say I was a struggling raw foodist? And the perfume writing stuff isn't easy either. I walk a fine line between being who I am and trying to be interesting, too. I am what I am, and you're reading it right here. My husband recently commented that my writing is different from the way I speak. I told him that was because I'm in a different gear when I talk but that I think the way I write. Lack of confidence? The result of talking to toddlers and young children most of my adult life? Dunno.

Studying ~ Never. Freakin'. Ends. Arctander is on the top of the stack -- always. Sadly, I shipped my antique three-volume Poucher to a friend for study, but I never really reference it that much anyway; 'Une Vie au Service du Parfum' is still a dream study -- struggling with the French in the way of the idiot here, but I'll do it. I work on at least two perfume-related projects a day as a rule. Some days I'll work on scent profiles, some days it's working and reworking a future perfume. Some days I just play around. I put in no fewer than four hours a day, four or five days a week at a minimum. I treat it like a job and I find it's so much easier to make the time. Yeah, my refrigerator hasn't been cleaned out in a month and there's some double occupancy cobwebs dangling in the corners of the livingroom, but mah house smells goooood.

Thinking ~ Well, I do do that. Sometimes.