A true Irishman is never in a hurry

I haven't been blogging much recently, and I wanted to share with you the reasons why.

No, it's important, really it is. Everyone has good, solid reasons why they haven't gotten around to doing the small, but important things in their lives, don't they? As a writer, I should be able to add writer's block to my list or something equally convincing.

Actually, writer's block has little to do with my situation. I'm currently writing the third book in my Irish trilogy, Molly O'Malley and the Pirate Queen. I'm into chapter ten at the moment, and I'm on a roll. So it's not writer's block.

I took a few days out to enter a writing contest at my work, called Art/Work: Creativity from the Cube. They expanded it to include literary categories this year, so naturally I had to give it a try. I entered in four categories, won first place in two of them and placed second in the other two. You can read about it in my News and Events on my main website.

The main reason I can point to for not blogging is that my youngest daughter is getting married on July 4th. There are LOTS of activities associated with planning a wedding: finding the church, finding the minister, finding the dress, deciding who to invite, making the invitations, making the programs, making up gift baskets, designing the table centerpieces for the reception, reserving the tux, deciding the tux that I already own can be used by renting only the shirt, tie and vest the groomsmen are getting and saving $100, finding the reception hall, planning the food for the reception, making special gifts for the bride and groom that I can't tell you about right now, reserving the limo, and so on.

A word of advice to other bloggers out there: a wedding actually gives you a lot to write about.

I know there is a lot of personal stuff associated with a wedding, and many readers really aren't that interested in my personal stuff. I'm still trying to find my niche, though, and it's possible that many readers will actually be interested in the topic, and even my take on it.

The interesting thing about this wedding is that my daughter has an Irish background and her fiance's background is Scottish. So we're going to have a Celtic-themed wedding. We've made a weddin' ba, a Scottish tradition for the children attending who are too young to catch the bride's bouquet or the garter. It's essentially a round ball-shaped pinata filled with candy and coins.

I've made a PowerPoint show with pictures of both kids growing up, using an Irish font for their names. We're sharing an Irish blessing with guests who stay at a nearby hotel. We've made custom handkerchiefs for the tux pockets out of the groom's clan tartan.

Still, you get around to doing the things you want to do. Or that your loving spouse yells at you to do because you're busy doing other things. Bottom line, procrastination is all about finding excuses for not doing things early.

Here's an example: I just save the best things for last.