Today was kind of a reversion to unproductive-land. However, I'm starting to wonder if all this stuff I've been spouting about how I need to write earlier in the day is real, or if I've just been saying what seemed to work when I was a) employed and had to get up early, and b) is repeated in a lot of writing/productivity blogs. I've always been a night owl, and while my commute enforced an early wake-up time for almost two years, I often wasn't that productive when I got to the office early (and even then, I'd had almost two hours to wake up and ruminate between getting ready and driving down). I was often far more productive writing at night over steak and wine than I was writing over lattes in the early morning hours, even though it was harder to motivate at night because I wanted to crawl into bed.
So for the next few days, I think I'm going to actively try doing other things in the mornings (social media, emails, reading, whatever), and write in the afternoon/late night (with some breaks in between). This seems like a better strategy, potentially, than trying to force myself out of bed and into a coffeeshop where I then am too sedated to write until I've had a lot of caffeine and plenty of time to wake up.
sssanyway. You can probably guess from that that I got up this morning and forced myself to go to Another Cafe, where I was supremely unproductive and started to hate myself for it. But I pulled myself out of my hate spiral, came home, ate lunch, did three loads of laundry, and vacuumed my apartment. I also showered in deference to the social plans I was supposed to have tonight, but they were canceled at the last minute (well - second-to-last-minute, since I hadn't left the house yet). So I went to my favorite sushi place and ate/drank there while scribbling notes to myself in my day planner - there's so much that I want to do in the weeks/months ahead, and the key is to just start making progress someplace without getting overwhelmed at the road ahead.
There are probably things I need to let go of as part of that. My day job may be one of them; while you could rightly say that I quit six months ago, I still go back way too much, and I'm still too tied to the people there, which makes it easy to imagine how easy my life would be if I still worked there. The city may be another; I can't really imagine leaving since most of my network is here, but I'm getting tired of the noise and the filth and the intractable social problems and the extremely high cost of living. And the more I can cut out the toxic, unhappy-making things in my life, the easier it would be to focus on the writing.
But that's all a task for another day. Right now I'm going to go to bed with grand plans to laze about in it tomorrow morning and write in the afternoon instead - wish me luck with that. Goodnight!
So for the next few days, I think I'm going to actively try doing other things in the mornings (social media, emails, reading, whatever), and write in the afternoon/late night (with some breaks in between). This seems like a better strategy, potentially, than trying to force myself out of bed and into a coffeeshop where I then am too sedated to write until I've had a lot of caffeine and plenty of time to wake up.
sssanyway. You can probably guess from that that I got up this morning and forced myself to go to Another Cafe, where I was supremely unproductive and started to hate myself for it. But I pulled myself out of my hate spiral, came home, ate lunch, did three loads of laundry, and vacuumed my apartment. I also showered in deference to the social plans I was supposed to have tonight, but they were canceled at the last minute (well - second-to-last-minute, since I hadn't left the house yet). So I went to my favorite sushi place and ate/drank there while scribbling notes to myself in my day planner - there's so much that I want to do in the weeks/months ahead, and the key is to just start making progress someplace without getting overwhelmed at the road ahead.
There are probably things I need to let go of as part of that. My day job may be one of them; while you could rightly say that I quit six months ago, I still go back way too much, and I'm still too tied to the people there, which makes it easy to imagine how easy my life would be if I still worked there. The city may be another; I can't really imagine leaving since most of my network is here, but I'm getting tired of the noise and the filth and the intractable social problems and the extremely high cost of living. And the more I can cut out the toxic, unhappy-making things in my life, the easier it would be to focus on the writing.
But that's all a task for another day. Right now I'm going to go to bed with grand plans to laze about in it tomorrow morning and write in the afternoon instead - wish me luck with that. Goodnight!
2 comments:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” You provide the cabin, and I’ll provide the woods! It’s time to Thoreau away the troubles of city life!
@Censored - let's discuss this opportunity at Christmas. We'll see whether I can find a coat heavy enough before that to make the idea of wintering in a cabin in the woods palatable ;) If your woods come with heat lamps, that would help!
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