Write On Wednesday: How We Spend Our Days

Most Wednesdays I set aside as “writing days.” On Wednesday I start out with lofty ambitions and goals for my personal writing, plans for what I hope to accomplish, ideas that have been dutifully noted in notebooks and journals and tattered bits of paper. 

And mostly on Wednesdays, I fail. 

At least, I consider it a failure. Because most of my Wednesdays turn out like today. I woke up and looked at the clock, knowing the minute my eyes popped open that they wouldn’t be closing again to sleep until at least 16 hours later. I carefully (and somewhat painfully) extricated myself from the cocoon of sleeping dogs surrounding me, found my slippers in the dark, and crept down the stairs. I made some coffee, emptied the dishwasher, and took my cup back upstairs to my office where I finished reading one book, started another, wrote my morning pages, and then started on a list of ideas for writing later in the day. 

This is the point where the day begins to derail. My husband’s alarm goes off, and I get up to make more coffee. I begin to feel hungry, and decide to exercise before my hunger becomes unbearable. I get dressed, walk for 30 minutes, eat blueberry yogurt and granola, look at the email and scroll through Facebook, tend to first one dog and then the other, toast a bagel for Jim. I come back to my computer, open the blog page, type in the title. 

But the sun is shining so beautifully today. It’s quite comfortable to be outside, for the first time in many, many days. My little dogs would love a good walk, I think. 

So I walk again. 

I meet a neighbor, who tells me news of a lost dog in the neighborhood this morning, one she spent two hours trying to corral, and another hour locating the owner. Now there is a morning gone awry, I think, surreptitiously looking at my watch.

Magic is particularly “nosy” this morning, stopping every three steps it seems to root around in the still brown grass, soaking up the scents of every animal who has passed by since we walked this route yesterday. Finally, we make it home. I open the front door and the clock on my hall table reads 11:15. I’ve been up for seven hours, and haven’t written a word of what I intended, which included this weekly blog post.

Already on the road to failure, I think. 

But am I really?

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Annie Dillard wrote these words, and most times when I read them, they rise before me like a yellow caution sign. “Take heed!” they warn. “Be careful how you spend your days, your hours, your fleeting minutes.” 

My intention lately has been to live with intention, to take notice of the ways my minutes accumulate, how I spend them like the precious currency they are. Perhaps by marking them, I can learn how to use them more wisely. 

Then I consider, perhaps writing is not always about words on paper. Perhaps writing lives in the simple noticing, in the layers and levels of being that every day brings. After all, just by living life, we are storing up impressions, memories, all the things that are important to the writing itself. 

Rather than hold myself to such a high standard of productivity, isn’t it wiser simply to allow things to be as they are? To be gentle with myself, because the world is rarely gentle with me?

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” 

Of course. Days rarely unfold with any predictability. Things don’t turn out as planned, and that’s alright. 

I believe the best writing arises from that which is truly lived, truly loved, truly experienced. 

The way we spend our days.

The Sunday Salon: When the Reading Is Hard

Practically everyone I know has been reading Kristin Hannah’s historical novel, The Nightingale. It’s a tale of two sisters trying to survive during the Nazi occupation and takeover of France during the years between 1939 and 1945. My Goodread’s timeline is awash with accolades.

If you read last week’s post, then you know how much I enjoy historical fiction, particularly that set in and around the two World Wars. I’ve been reading a lot of it lately - it seems that every book I pick up off the library shelf is in that genre or time period. So I got hold of a copy of The Nightingale and dug in.

First, I must add my voice to the accolades for Kristin Hannah - this book is quite a tour de force for her. It's an entirely different book from the kind she usually writes. Her novels are always well developed stories, with interesting and likable characters facing issues most women can relate to. And The Nightingale is no different in that regard. But it has a depth of feeling that is completely different than any of her other fiction.

And boy, was it hard to read. Emotionally, I mean. The stories of privation and loss and struggle and cruelty were absolutely relentless throughout the nearly 500 pages. I cannot imagine enduring the horror that the French people suffered. And I suppose my naiveté shows, but it is stall hard to imagine one group of human beings willfully wreaking such pain and suffering on another. 

To be honest, the book scared me. I grew up on stories of WWII - my father and all my uncles were American GI’s who served on both fronts during the war. All this evil happened in countries we readily and easily visit, less than 75 years later.  I should (and do) feel relieved that these countries are now peaceful and thriving, that they have recovered from such horrible devastation in such a relatively short period of historic time.

But I don’t believe we ever learn as much as we should from history. 

So it could happen again. It could happen anywhere, even here in my nice, safe backyard. 

The major question Hannah asks of her readers is this: What would you have the courage to do to protect not only the people you love, but perfect strangers? In the face of horrible evil, how far would you go to fight for the right? I admit, it made me uncomfortable to consider. Both Vianne and Isabelle, the main characters in the book, displayed remarkable courage and strength, staring death in the face every single day, a strength I know I don’t have.

I finished the book yesterday, and I was glad to finish it. I wanted out of all that horror in the worst way. 

And I was only living it in the black and white words on the page.

Sometimes, reading can take us to places we don’t really want to go. Sometimes, books are hard.

But I think that makes them all the more important to read.

How about you? Have you read books that were emotionally difficult?  

Life Goes On

Life in general has been quiet these days. I’m waiting every so impatiently for spring to come, and the sight of minuscule star-shaped snowflakes trickling from the clouds this morning was not the sight I hoped to see on the 27th day of March. Still, I will bundle up again (winter coat, earmuffs, gloves) and walk the dogs and try to ignore the frosty wind, thankful at least that the pavement is dry.

I have settled into a pattern this winter, getting up very early to drink my first two cups of coffee in the quiet house, wrapped in a warm sweater and curled into my corner of the couch. I write my morning pages, go down in the basement to exercise (yes, I still do the Walk at Home program with Leslie Sansone!), and eventually make it back to the kitchen counter for breakfast of yogurt, granola, and fruit. By this time, everybody else is getting up, so it’s time to take the dogs out, prepare breakfast for Jim, and let the rest of the world in on my day.

If I were to choose a favorite time of day, it would most certainly be those few hours in the morning when I’m the only one awake, the house still and safe around me, the promise of the day bright and shining in front of me. Those precious minutes when there are no demands on my time, when no one needs anything from me, those hours I call only my own - those are golden. 

I’ve never minded being alone - of course, I’ve never had a steady diet of it, never lived alone as a permanent state of being. I went directly from my parents house to my own house with a husband. I never spent one night alone until I’d been married about two years and Jim went off on a business trip. 

That was a long and restless night, I can tell you: I was acutely aware of every thump and creak in the house, and drifted off to sleep only in fits and starts. But he traveled a lot, and I got used to it soon enough.

We get used to things, don’t we? We grow accustomed to the little changes life throws our way. I’m used to going outside with the dogs now, rather than having the convenience of letting them out the backdoor into the fenced yard. And they have become accustomed to hurrying out, taking care of business, and being herded back inside, waiting for their daily walks to satisfy the need for sniffing and meandering.

I’m used to waking up too early every day, the shifting hormones in my body going through their mysterious cycles and waking me up before first light. I’ve come to enjoy it, see it as a gift, and make the most of it, even though in these early spring days it means I’m often struggling to stay awake before it’s completely dark outside.

We settle into our routines quite easily, and the older we get, the more deeply ingrained in them we become. That hour or two in the morning with my coffee and a book is absolutely sacred to me. Maintaining that little routine governs more of my activities than you might think. I never schedule appointments early in the morning, I’ve turned down jobs because they would required early morning start times.  There were many, many years when I shot out of bed and jumpstarted the day - breakfast, carpooling, work. 

But no more. One of the benefits of my current stage of life is the ability to slow down, to step back and know what I need in the day and then find a way to make that happen. 

I ordered a t-shirt the other day because I loved the sentiment emblazoned on the front: 

happy. healthy. balanced. peaceful. life.

As life goes on for me, it’s exactly what I seek for my future.

Most days lately I’ve been fortunate enough to find it. 

But only if I get that two hours in the morning with my coffee and a book. 

The Sunday Salon: Another Time

If you were to glance at my reading list for this year, you might think I was a student of history. So far this year I’ve read 23 books, and 10 of them were “historical novels.”  My trusty reading chair has become a virtual time machine, letting me explore England during the time periods of both World Wars, an artist’s atelier in late 18th century Paris, and midwifery in Appalachia during the 1950’s. Even my contemporary fiction choices have not brought me into the present day, but pushed me back into the late 20th century, with novels set in the 1960’s and 1990’s. 

This all has me thinking - why am I gravitating toward the past? 

Reading is more than my favorite pastime. Sometimes I think it’s almost like therapy...I read to learn about people, and how they conduct their lives and relationships. The characters in the novels I love most are those I can identify with, who are struggling with some of the same issues as I do as we go about our lives in general. Just this morning, I read the following paragraph in Jennifer Robson’s novel, After the War is Over that reminded me of similar sentiments which show up in my journal pages and on my blog:

“When had she ever spent an entire day having fun? She was thirty-three, and in the course of her adult life, she now realized she had never, not ever, allowed herself an entire day of fun without being overcome by guilt or anxiety or the rear that there were worthier things to do. Having fun was for other people - people who earned the right to be carefree.” 

I’ve sometimes felt as if I were born in the wrong era, as if I would have been happier growing up as my parents did in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Now that I’ve spent nearly six decades on earth, I begin to feel even more outside of time as the 21st century speeds past. I love my technology as much as the next person, but sometimes I get frightened at the way it seems to control our lives. I worry about a generation of children who depend on technology for entertainment, education, and interpersonal relationships. 

No matter what era they’re set in, the historical novels I read remind me of times when entertainment was gentler and life was slower, when communication was much more personal, when people were more mindful of the natural world and it’s cycles. 

This winter has been difficult for me. In addition to extreme cold and snow, I’ve been ill off and on all winter, and I’m still feeling fragile, as if I’m on a precipice and just one misstep from plunging over.

So I lose myself in these novels of other times and places to forget those things in modern life that seem threatening, but also to remind myself of the common ground we all share in this life in general, no matter what time period we’re living in.

These are the historical novels I’ve read since January:

Romancing Miss Bronte

Amherst

The Paying Guests

In This House of Brede

The Visitors

The Secret Life of Violet Grant

The Midwife of Hope River

Secrets of  A Charmed LIfe

Rodin’s Lover

After the War is Over

Rejoicing in Relaxation

Last week we spent a few days in Dallas with our son and his family. We had been hoping for warmer weather, and Texas obliged us for the first couple of days, enabling us to take some nice walks in their neighborhood.

Our grandson is a walker. He eschewed the stroller a long time ago and doesn’t much care for his tricycle. I having a feeling he’s going to prefer his own two feet for transportation - at least until he gets a set of four wheels and an engine to move him from place to place. 

One afternoon he decided we needed to take a walk to the park and check out the fountains in a large estuary pond. His mom was taking a much needed afternoon rest, so the two of us set out on our own. Connor kept up a steady stream of conversation all the way to the fountains, which I’d estimate is at least 3/4 of a mile. We spent some time discussing the state of disrepair of one of the fountains, a subject he finds endlessly fascinating. We watched the ducks waddle around (the ducks in Texas are HUGE, like everything else in this larger than life state), and counted people going by on bicycles.

About halfway home, I could tell his short legs were getting tired. Heck, MY short legs were getting tired. We had reached the playground opposite their subdivision, so I suggested we take a rest. We found some large boulders and sat down to watch the kids at their games.

Connor scooted up close to me and popped two fingers in his mouth, his little security habit. We sat in silence for about 10 minute, just observing some older boys and girls hanging from the balance bars, riding their bikes around the paths, climbing trees. 

“Isn’t this nice?” Connor said. “We are just relaxing."

“It is SO nice,” I agreed. What could be better than to sit quietly in the sun with a three year old who was happily content to watch the world go by?

Another 15 minutes went by, and I admit I was starting to get a little antsy. That rock was not the most comfortable sitting spot, after all. “Are you ready to head home?” I asked him hopefully.

“Not yet,” he said. “Let’s just keep relaxing."

I shifted my hind quarters around a little bit and got myself as comfortable as possible. Connor started a running commentary about the cars going by, identifying each one as belonging to one or another of his menagerie of stuffed animals. “That’s Ping’s car right there,” he said, pointing to a Jeep Cherokee driving down the street. “Ping is coming home from work. Harvie will be coming soon. And then the scooters will be coming out at 17 o’clock."

We continued our “relaxing” for about 10 more minutes. “Let’s go see Mommy now,” Connor suddenly announced, so I unfolded myself from our relaxing spot and we finished walking home with renewed energy.

As any grandmother will attest, these are the kinds of moments that are as precious as gold. We weren’t doing anything, we didn’t have any books or toys (or ELECTRONICS!) we were just relaxing and enjoying each others company. This is so rare in today’s world when we always feel the impulse to be busy doing something productive or else choose to connect ourselves to outside sources of entertainment. But everything is endlessly fascinating for little kids - the fountain that doesn’t work, the ducks that come begging for bread crumbs, the bigger kids hanging off tree branches and teasing each other. Even the steady stream of cars going by can spark their imagination. 

That’s what I want more of in my life - that willingness to slow down, take it all in, observe and notice and wonder.  I suspect there is a lot of time within my daily routine that I allow to be sucked up by “busy work,” the kind of stuff that’s akin to the mimeographed worksheets our elementary teachers used to hand out when they were sick and tired of us and needed a few minutes to regroup. 

My new goal every day - relax more. I don’t want to plan it, I don’t want to schedule it, I just want to recognize when there is an opportunity to revel in it and not allow myself to succumb to the call of the internet or the laundry or the cooking or the shopping or the bill paying.

Of course, it won’t be quite the same without my little companion by my side, or our nice rock to sit on.

But I’m going to rejoice in it all the same.

How about you? Do you take time to really relax each day?