back to work

Back from "vacation".

Kimmie has had a week off, and today returns to the Corporation to resume the stresses of contract development, her new job. I too took a week "off".

What does that mean in my case? First of all: no waking to an alarm-clock. This morning the alarm was again set to ring at 5:30, but Kimmie's bedside clock lay silent through the past week. That meant sleeping in till 7:00 each morning, and therefore a day shaped differently from the usual "work" day.

I would still key my research notes over morning coffee--what else would I do? I enjoy that, and it gives a feeling of forward motion, however spurious.

The real "vacation" lay in not opening up my chapter-notes to struggle with my story. This is the daunting and anxiety-producing part of the work, and therefore the part from which I seek any excuse to avoid--including the excuse of being on "vacation". For a week I gave myself permission to leave the beast alone.

As usual we stayed close to home, except for an overnight trip to Vancouver Island to visit my father (very nice, and with excellent dining as always). We did some neighborhood walks and bought Kimmie a dress-form at Dressew downtown for her birthday--and Kimmie did spend plenty of time in her "mad scientist's lab" of sewing creations in Robin's old bedroom, in the summer heat and with the noise of traffic blasting in the open window from Keith Road.

Now it's time to take up cudgels again and measure my powers against the waiting monster of my work. O terrible foe.

keeping the posts short

I seem to be running behind. I know: I have no job, no fixed schedule; what can "behind" mean to me?

Well, I live a routine life, just as much as if I had a regular job. This is the most productive way to live, I find--and productivity is important to me, appearances notwithstanding. The meagerness of my output is not due to any desire to keep my work in short supply. But without my routine, that output would be more meager still.

So I'm very aware of time. At any given moment of the day, I can usually guess the time to within about 5 minutes. To have a productive day, I know where I should be at each time of that day.

I fit the writing of blog-posts in after my morning research-notes-with-coffee, and before I head up for breakfast. In order for the blog to stay alive, it' s important that it not take too much time. Sometimes I get caught up in my argument or point, though, and find that a post can take me an hour to write. I don't feel good when that happens--it's too much time.

Today, running late, my intention was to jot down only a quick, back-of-envelope blog-post. It's already become longer and fleshier than what I intended, so that's a bonus.

But it's time to get on with my, uh, "real" day, such as that is.

On with the week, on with my work.

lifestyle of the independent thinker

Yesterday I worked on both projects. I pushed ahead with more investigation relating to The Mission, and in the afternoon, after lunch and my energizing siesta, I opened up the Word files I've got on my future-fiction opus, and picked up there more or less where I'd left off.

It felt good. I'm able to write the way I read: switching from one thing to another, refreshed by the change when my attention flags. Plus, with the future work (I'll just call in Project B for now), I felt actual creative excitement, something I can experience only in small, controlled bursts with The Mission, hemmed in as it is by the complexities of factual research. With Project B I can let the volcano of my imagination spew forth its forms--which it is well able to do.

In that way I can happily pass a day in complete solitude. I saw no one yesterday from the time Kimmie left in the morning till she returned at dusk. No one phoned. I did not stir from the house into the gray rain. But the day felt productive to me, so I was happy. I moved slowly from one activity to another, but by and large, I did not waste my time.

Commuting to work, for example, is a waste of one's time (apart from all its other negative attributes). I don' t do that. Going out to lunch while one is at work is, generally, a waste of time and money. I don't do that either. Preparing to go to work--dressing, grooming oneself, and so on--may not exactly be a waste of time, but it can be an irksome, unwelcome chore. I don't do that either. I shave, dress, and so on before I leave the house--when I'm ready, not under the gun first thing in the morning.

All these facts make my life appear leisurely. But as I looked at it yesterday, I waste very little time. First thing, out of bed, I make the coffee and then hit the office, studying my PC's operating system, then typing research notes from highlighted books (for example, from The Roman Conquest of Italy and The Cults of the Roman Empire this morning), then writing my blog-post. Next: breakfast. Almost always cereal, taken in the living-room while reading a magazine. No, not Star Weekly; usually one or other of Scientific American, The Economist, MIT Technology Review, Canadian Geographic, or Popular Science. Then some exercises and stretches, and on to my writing day.

I fix myself some lunch, over which I do more (purposeful) reading. Then comes teeth-brushing etc., and my siesta--necessary to make me more alert in the afternoon, and to prolong my shelf-life a bit in the evening. Then it's on to errands, or, if I have no pressing errands, like yesterday, I can get back to the office and (hopefully) do more. Yesterday it was Project B.

At 3:00 p.m. it's back upstairs to start reading. I make some tea and read from about four books I've got on the go. Yesterday it was Angela's Ashes, Letting Go of the Words, The Roman Conquest of Italy, Six Degrees, and The Act of Creation. Each of these is project-oriented. I'm reading Angela's Ashes mainly so I can better help my mother work on her memoir. Letting Go of the Words is a web-copywriting text (and a very good one). The Roman Conquest of Italy is background for The Mission. Six Degrees is to enlarge my general knowledge of what's happening in the world, and is also background for Project B. The Act of Creation, a psychological text on creativity, I'm reading as part of my ongoing research into the nature of identity--which is really a larger philosophical project.

Often, as yesterday, my reading period is punctuated by a fitness walk with Kimmie when she gets home. We do a brisk walk through the neighborhood, and she can talk about the latest office politics. Then, come 7:00 p.m., Kimmie and I have dinner. My "work" day is over, and I'm ready to watch some TV, usually programming I've borrowed from the library. By 9:30 I'm starting to nod off, and it's time to hit the sack.

Sometimes, watching the news and so on, I think I should be doing more in the world. People are out there, doing stuff, and maybe I should be out there doing stuff too.

But that passes. I'm getting to know myself well enough that I don't feel confused about what I should be doing. A few days ago, maybe while I was lying awake in the night, my true job title came to me: independent thinker. If I had to sum up what I think my function is on planet Earth, that's probably it. The other things that I do--creative works and so on--come out of that. I feel I was put here to think independently.

I feel very good about that. It implies a lot. As vocations go, it's quite rare. Looking around me at the world, it appears that very little true thinking is being done. And of the thinking being done, very little is what I would call independent.

So there you have it: the lifestyle of the independent thinker. Not very appealing, perhaps--unless you happen to be one.

the best excuse

Yesterday when I came down in the afternoon, when I usually might write a blog-post, I found myself opening up my notes document for the next chapter (27) and working on that. In so doing, I was fulfilling an age-old plan to work in this way: write prose in the morning, and push on with notes in the afternoon. This is how a productive person would work, so why not me too?

I am productive. I'm not producing as much of what I would like, but I am producing a fair amount of material, mostly notes. Mainly what happens is that I get fed up with the project. I get bored with thinking about it any more, and want to push it away, with a feeling not unlike that which accompanies taking one bite too many of a wiener: a sense of surfeit and the first involuntary movements of the gag reflex. At that point it's my body rather than my mind saying, "No more wiener!"

The idea of working that way was that the afternoon note-making would clear the brush ahead so I could continue in the mornings building the road of narrative. It's a good idea and I stand by it. The problem is in implementation: the reality that in many ways, I'm lucky to get anything done, in any way, on this massive project, on any given day.

While I was washing the dishes just now I recalled a quote from the ancient slave-philosopher Epictetus: "We ask the gods for what they have not given, when they have already given us so much."

I should be grateful for the leisure I have still got to work on this project, and for whatever I manage actually to achieve toward completing it.

Anyway: that by way of excuse for not writing a blog-post yesterday. I came down today thinking perhaps to write just a short post of explanation before doing some more note-making, but I struggled to log on to my Google account: it is much more difficult now that I have opted to use their "improved" Blogger. The blame probably also lies with my security software: Trend Micro's PC-cillin, which seems to have massive amounts of code that hog most of my computer's resources, and interferes with my ability to load Web pages. The latest version of my old security provider, Kaspersky, would not install on my PC, despite being compatible with Windows 98 SE.

Yes, I need a new PC. And therefore...money. And therefore...a different career.

No--I'm not going to ask the gods. They have already given so much.

recovering work habits

I'll get in a fast post. The daily routine has changed now that Kimmie has returned to work and we're trying to maintain the virtue of power-walking each day (most days anyway). The doable slot for that is after Kimmie gets home, about 4:20. To go out walking then, I have to do half my daily reading before then, requiring me to start at around 3:00. Well, 3:00 used to be my guideline time for doing a blog-post.

So where have blog-posts gone? It's still up in the air. Right now I'm working this one in between returning home from a haircut (much overdue) and moving on to the ever-loving reading with my tea.

I'm back writing again: keying story-related notes first thing in the dark of morning, over coffee, and moving on, with fear, to the actual drafting of fictional prose in the rest of the morning. The good news for me was that when I reopened chapter 25 to start rejigging it, I was fairly happy with much of what I found there. In fact, I found that a number of ideas I'd gotten lately for improving the chapter were already in there when I looked at it. Yes--I'd forgotten what I'd put in, and thought up the same ideas again as ways of improving the chapter. Friends, that is not an efficient way to do anything. It's a testament to how long the thing has been lying around, not unlike those car-hulks you see in some guys' garages or on their lawns: perpetual "works in progress", where neither the work nor the progress are ever much in evidence.

Still, William James says in his Principles of Psychology that if you simply keep at something during the working hours of each day--that is, make a habit of doing something--your eventual success is virtually certain. So I suppose I have a New Year's resolution after all: to make an appointment with my chapter in progress each day. Yes, to reacquire the not-too-bad work habits that used be marked as "satisfactory" by my teachers on my elementary-school report cards. Lately, to be honest, I think I myself would have checked the "needs improvement" box.