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Category: time

Me Time

Me Time

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People always want “me time,” said the calm voice emanating from the screen, but we actually have a lot more of it than we might think. The way to retrieve it, he said, is to live mindfully, to stop thinking two steps ahead of ourselves to what we will do after the thing we’re doing now. 

When I heard this during my guided meditation session today, little fireworks went off in my mind. Not because I’m always clamoring for “me time,” a phrase that frankly makes me cringe. But because I know, in my heart of hearts, how much time I spend spinning wheels and riling myself up over nothing. 

It’s largely to still those wheels and quiet that worried, one-step-ahead-of-myself feeling that I’ve sought the solace of sitting still and focusing on my breath. I am still so poor at it, though; I can barely make it 10 puny minutes before giving in to rumination. 

But the sudden awareness that freeing thought is also freeing time — understanding the power of that equation — well, that will make me try harder from now on. 

Rough Winds

Rough Winds

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Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May 
And summer’s lease hath far too short a date.

So go the third and fourth lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, which begins with the lines “Shall I compare thee to a summer day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate.”

They’ve been in my mind lately as the brisk winds continue to blow and the gray clouds continue to blot out the sun. It’s been one of the coolest springs on record, and is beginning to bother me — not that there’s a thing I can do about it except try to see the positive side.

And that brings me back to Shakespeare. Because the buds, though shaken, are staying buds longer than usual. They aren’t flowering and fading as quickly as they would if our temperatures were topping 80 each day.

A cool spring may try the patience of one who loves warm weather, but it will, for a few days at least, keep time at bay.

(If the bottom photo looks blurry, it’s because the wind was indeed shaking these fully bloomed knockout roses.) 

Sunday’s Rhyme

Sunday’s Rhyme

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Monday last was frantic-paced
Tuesday slowed, was still a race.
Wednesday came and went so fast
And Thursday zoomed by in a blast.
Friday to-dos meant more working.
Saturday had no time for shirking.
So now we have the Sabbath Day…
I hope to slow down, fi-nal-lay!
(With apologies to the nursery rhyme.)  
Day 21 and No Novel?

Day 21 and No Novel?

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The headline caught my eye yesterday. “We have a lot more time now. Why can’t we get anything done.” What’s happening with that novel? Where are those sonnets?

They’re no further along than they were before, perhaps because we’ve lost the usual markers that make us more efficient, says the time management expert who wrote the article. Or perhaps — and this explanation is infuriatingly accurate — we just don’t have the will.

The author, Laura Vanderkam, quotes the caption of a recent New Yorker cartoon: “Day 6. Couldn’t decide between starting to write my novel or my screenplay. So instead I ate three boxes of mac and cheese and then lay on the office floor panicking.”

Not exactly my life — but the windfall of time I thought would appear without commute, appointments or social engagements has not exactly materialized. I’ve tried to figure out where the time has gone. I’ve slept a little more and cooked a little more and worked a little more. Could that be where the days and weeks have gone?

Maybe living through a pandemic is not when you should expect to get caught up on all your creative pursuits — as well as staying in touch with friends and family and strategizing grocery store runs like battle campaigns. Maybe I should be content with whatever words I can eke out of the day, and with this as with so much else … simply soldier on.

(This is an old photo of stickies pulled off page proofs I read with my old job. But they remind me of — sigh! — completed tasks.)

Late Light

Late Light

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After a late light evening, a late dark morning. The drive I normally do in full daylight I did today in the gloaming, with the glow of an almost-full moon to guide me.

It’s no matter. I’ve experienced this enough by now to expect the shift and roll with it. The missing hour of sleep is another issue. In my experience once you lose it you seldom get it back. The long catch-up snoozes do little to erase the deficit.

Nevertheless, I look forward to acclimating soon. I want to be awake and alert to enjoy the endless afternoons, the dusks that go on forever, the sense of possibility that late light can bring.

Blank Slate

Blank Slate

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It’s the first time I’ve been home in the morning light since I pruned the rose bush, and I sit at the kitchen table looking at the results. There are fewer branches, to be sure, and there is a clarity, the beginnings of new growth.

How I wish I could bring that clarity to other tasks at hand: to the boxes and shelves and hidden corners of my house. To the jumble of ideas in my brain.

What’s required is the kind of careful, methodical approach I used last Sunday. That requires time … and space. Long afternoons, mornings without appointments. The blank slate of an empty room.

Tick-Tock

Tick-Tock

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From where I sit I hear three clocks ticking. There is the familiar cuckoo from the kitchen, the breath-in-breath-out grandfather between the windows, and the “bim bam” on the mantel, the fastest of the trio.

Listening to them all at once isn’t confusing; it’s multi-modal. It’s the solidity of braided ropes, a hammock of sorts, holding me in place.

It’s the calm center in the midst of the action: like listening to a Bach prelude or fugue, where you search for each voice amidst the harmony. Or like jumping rope, double dutch.

It’s all about the rhythm, about three adding up to one. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Each Day

Each Day

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Walking an older doggie first thing in the morning has its minuses. I’d much rather let the day unravel slowly, in fuzzy robe and slippers, staying inside and writing or reading until I’ve been awake for an hour or two.

But walking an older doggie first thing has its pluses, too, and that’s what I’m thinking about today.  Being out early, when the day is just beginning, means I can take a measure of it, can sniff out its aromas, attend to its sounds. A little less bird song, a little less humidity, a lot more sunshine.

Being out early helps me understand that each day is a gift — one that we can relish or ignore.

The Gift of Time

The Gift of Time

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This morning I embark on a two-day writer’s getaway, courtesy of my daughter Claire, who decided last Christmas that what I needed most of all was the gift of time. She was amazingly kind and wise beyond her years when she made this decision, because I need it so much that I’m only now using it 11 months later.

Time is what writers need and what this writer lacks. I’m not complaining. I would much rather have more ideas than time than be twiddling my thumbs with vacant afternoons and nothing to say. And yet, it often frustrates me that my own writing time (writing what I want to write, not what I’m paid to write), is crammed into the bits and pieces of a day: scribbling on Metro, rising early, retiring late.

Today and tomorrow is a break in that routine. Two days to unwind and charge the creative engine. I always remember what happens to those who don’t, beautifully articulated by the poet Mary Oliver: “The most regretful people on earth,” she wrote, “are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

Thank you, Mary Oliver. And most of all, thank you, Claire!

A Poor Trade?

A Poor Trade?

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By about 4 p.m. yesterday that extra hour of sleep Saturday night was beginning to seem like a pretty poor trade for the early darkness. The angle of light and the gathering shadows were disorienting, coming as they were a full hour earlier than I was braced to expect them.

In short, it’s “fall back” all over again, half of the crazy exercise in discombobulation we undergo twice a year. In this one we gain sleep and lose light — and in the springtime just the opposite, of course.

As an early riser, I technically shouldn’t mind this shift, because the light we lose in the evening we gain in the morning. But arriving home in darkness truncates the part of the day that belongs to us.  I always feel a bit robbed these first dark evenings.

I’ll get used to it eventually; I always do. And then it will become so much the norm that the bright evenings of early spring will seem an assault on the senses, leaving me blinking, as if someone flipped on the lights in the middle of the night.