Noodlin' & Chooglin'

My partner Christine & I joke about how we always need to keep on chooglin' (invoking the CCR tune that spawned the term in the pop culture). We say it to crack each other up.

I'm all about the chooglin' for sure, which, if John Fogerty is to be believed, basically means to keep on truckin' -- to keep going through thick and thin, whatever comes your way.

I'm cool with that. I've been chooglin' most of my professional life. And I've been noodlin' as well -- which, in musical terms, means to sort of improvise or play casually.

So, there's somehow a balance to be attained between noodlin' and chooglin' (I'm amusing myself by writing about this). There's something to be said for staying chill and casual while one is pushing forward through inevitable adversity toward the goals you hope to attain.

For a writer or other unconnected creator, even more so. I say "unconnected" because I don't think connected and/or privileged creators need to do any chooglin' whatsoever -- they operate in a choogle-free zone, because they're handed the wins by virtue of their privilege, or have readier access to the wins -- although they tend to retrofit some faux-adversity into their narratives to camouflage that. For the rest of us, however, there's always plenty of chooglin' we have to do.

It's a triumph of spirit, I think, in not allowing challenges to hobble you, whether personally or professionally. Stay open, stay limber, stay active. I mean, what's the alternative? Despair, surrender, and death. Right? Screw that.

Keep on chooglin' and noodlin' and you'll find your way eventually, whatever way that precisely is. That's where the noodlin' comes in -- you don't know what might work out for you while you're busy chooglin' -- and it's important to keep an eye on the proverbial prize while you're doing that.

Oh, and by the way -- it's always chooglin' -- NOT choogling. Nobody's ever choogling; you can only ever be chooglin' -- however, you can be noodling or noodlin' -- that's permissible; it's only in the realm of chooglin' where you can't slap that terminal "g" on the word.

Keep on chooglin', Gentle Reader...