Happiness: 10 Years of Day-on-Day Obsession
Back at Kelby’s Cafe in Marrickville, after too long a gap. Thursday sang especially wonderfully but yesterday was also great, and I have high hopes for today. Inching through the plot points, making sense of it all, and hopefully talking sense to the world . . .
I’m reporting the same mixed bag as a few weeks ago:
I’m investigating the notion of really focusing in 2018 on each day’s goals and outcomes. We’re not used to subjecting ourselves to such intense discipline, except in corporate environments where one might work on a project with a very detailed, day-on-day, person-by-person plan. Would such an emphasis on “do this, do that, have I been good” work? Would the effort be more than the benefit?
Anyway, here’s a playful experiment. Might I “express myself” with nonsense doodlings even as I complete the feedback loop at the end of a day?
Nonsense indeed!
When I’m working well and on song, a day vanishes. I glance at a baking hot blue sky and head inside to my desk.
A month ago, I’d have greeted this welcoming late spring dawn with a run or a bike ride. Now the early light means work. Sweaty exercise is relegated to the hot afternoons.
Am I mad?
Writer’s cramp
No wonder I’m struggling. I’ve taken what happened – the facts, the dates, the commentary – and stuck it into date order. Then I read my chronology and dream up a plot: the major events. I draft the main plot points: the key scenes. But there are many other background scenes and facts that must be included, so I draft them. The order of events is wrong or the story doesn’t hang together. Out come the scissors.
But then . . . how do I put the mess back together again? Some chapters are straightforward, this one is not.
You can bring a heap of peace into life by rising early. No other time of the day offers the same grace and potential.