Read, Write, Repeat: Where was I when I was his age?

Lately, I've been bumming around the internet to find something to help me with a current predicament:  I need to focus on some written projects of mine, but can't for some reason--or it feels like my efforts inevitably turn into squiggly-squash sounds, mixed with dazing off into the abyss.

Case in point.

I read my grandpa's memoirs not too long ago.  And to say the least, I came away feeling intimidated:  At the age of 24 Eugene Haderlie was diving in the Thames River, diffusing Nazi water mines, bare-handed, 100 feet below sea level.  He then went off to Utah Beach, Normandy and was part of the invasion of Germany, helped liberate the Jews left for dead in a concentration camp Buchenwald, and went on to help found the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  

(Now you know my secret for creating an amazing sea otter costume:  have grandfather be a marine biologist who works in the Monterey Bay Aquarium for 40 + years.  

It helps, trust me.)

Anyway, otters aside, I do feel as though comparing myself to what others have done by this age is a fruitless endeavor.  And I've learned something as a result:

At the age of 24 grandpa was saving the world.

At the age of 24 I am blogging.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.  But, there is something wrong if the very least I can do for this world (create and rewrite) is somewhat strained.  

In thinking it over, I realize I have had a sort of writers' block.  And yet, it's a weird off-shoot of writers' block.  The difficulty I have in writing is not so much ideas or finding interesting new things to talk about--it is more that it's hard for me to concentrate on one topic at a time consistently.  For me that's where the challenge comes in.  I have five or so unfinished manuscripts/written works in progress currently (a half-written play, two beginnings of two very different novels, a screenplay that's only up to it's first hero-struggling-but-will-overcome montage and of course, this blog).   

I have Writers' ADHD.  For example, I just rediscovered the parametric equations for the Cardiod Curve.  No, you don't have to understand what the equations mean.  But, how RAD is the animation that describes the curve's creation?  Pretty sick.  Who would have thought a circle rolling around another circle would create such a shape?  I guess the Greeks.  Another similar shape to the Cardiod is a Nephroid, which weirdly enough, occurs naturally (sometimes) at the bass of a coffee cup with liquid in it.  

Coffee Nephroid:  You'll never drink it the same way again.

No, your coffee hasn't gone bad--it's just a pattern of shadows that happen when a cup is placed under sunlight; light reflects off the cup in a pattern because the cup's got a circular curve to it (which makes in turn a reflective surface, or a catacaustic) and the outline of the nephroid, aka light beams racing back and forth against each other and the surface, appears as a result.  

And there you go.  Two paragraphs down, a fully random excerpt about nothing to do with anything later, I am back to where I started.  

But, that was a sick animation.

And you'll never look at your coffee the same way again.

Right?

-Beryl

Edited to add, A Woo Update:

This is Woo in real life.  Gotta love that amazing posture.

Found her earlier this afternoon, digging through mom's bag.

How is it possible that she doesn't even look remorseful for her crime, even though her face has been molded to look sad?

*end Woo update*