Daily life: Life under construction
"I am more and more certain that I still have not left the world but keep lingering on the edges. I am plainly and simply scared of 'no return,' and fear that the road of total commitment . . . is arduous, painful, and very lonely. . . .
"It is this type of extremism, of absolutism, of total surrender, of unconditional 'yes,' of unwavering obedience . . . that frightens me and makes me such a wishy-washy soul, wanting to keep a foot in both worlds. But that is how one stumbles."
--Henri J. M. Nouwen: The Genesee Diary.
For newcomers: Background to my writing entries | Background to my mentoring entries | Background to my simplicity entries | Background to my home entries.
*** 23 June 2009. Simplicity: Taking a second look at my life.
On Sunday I spent twelve hours online, only two of which were devoted to business.
On Sunday evening, I told myself that I clearly needed to spend the next day on simplicity tasks, in order to refresh my mind. I also told myself that I didn't have the time, because I wanted to get my paperback layout done before my father left for Europe this week. I went to bed uncertain of what to do.
On Monday, I spent five-and-a-half hours reading and writing about gardening.
On Tuesday, I spent eight hours reading, writing, and acquiring library books about gardening.
On Tuesday evening, I finally admitted to myself that I'd gone straight from an Internet browsing addiction to an offline browsing addiction. I made firm plans to devote the next day to simplicity tasks. As preparation, I picked up The Genesee Diary, where I found the words I quoted above.
Almost a year ago, I swore to myself that I would dedicate the next twelve months to changing my life. At the beginning of this year, I renewed that vow.
But how much progress have I really made? I've achieved little improvements in various areas, but have I fundamentally changed the core of how I approach life?
The core of how I approach life is without simplicity. I know the difference between the simple life and the complicated life because my heartbeat picks up when my life is complicated. I flit from activity to activity and lack the ability to concentrate on anything except with the help of my hypomania. I ignore clear indications that problems have arisen in my life. I'm callous to the needs of other people. I let important tasks pass by in favor of more enjoyable tasks. I act as though I'm on speed.
When my life is simple, things slow down. I'm more aware of my environment, my friends and family and online acquaintances, and the activities I undertake. Enjoyment comes as a byproduct of mindfulness on any given task rather than from a perception that certain tasks are better or worse. I do fewer tasks, and I do those tasks slower, but I do those tasks better.
At the moment, the only way in which I can achieve this state is by deliberately choosing to do only a select number of tasks that I know are unlikely to trigger hypermania in me. I severely limit reading, because that has a strong tendency to trigger my hypermania. Ditto with writing, and video-watching is off the agenda altogether. The only other things I allow myself to do are tasks that I normally avoid: housework, upkeep, phone calls, and exercise.
This works. It slows me down. This is my version of "leaving the world."
But I have to return eventually. And when I do, I find myself, like Father Nouwen, torn between two worlds.
Thinking about it tonight, I decided that, if spending one day a week on simplicity tasks isn't proving sufficient to keep me from falling back into old patterns, then I need to increase the amount of time I devote to simplicity to every other day. Because heaven knows that I have plenty of upkeep and housework to do; it's not as though, in a purely practical sense, I'd be wasting time if I devoted more time to that type of work. And the results might increase my efficiency at professional work on other days.
Which is avoiding the main point, of course. I need to do this regardless as to whether it's beneficial from a practical point of view. But I can't avoid thinking about the practical impact, because writing is my vocation.
What is it they say to new writers? "Kill your darlings"? The idea is that, in order to achieve the best writing, you must delete the passages you most love. What Father Nouwen was struggling with was the same problem: of how to achieve the best by giving up beloved attachments.
*** 24 June 2009. Simplicity, Gardening, and Home: Spiders, housework, and me.
"O ye green one," Doug said dryly when I proposed that, after our current mower dies, we buy a push mower.
I spent another day gardening-focussed, but it was a more relaxed day. I cleared out more English ivy and went looking for wildlife on our property. (I found birds I could hear in the trees but not see, an earthworm, ants, some relative of the dragonfly, a lightning bug, some little striped flying creatures that looked as though they might be some sort of bee, various tiny flying insects I couldn't identify - such as an insect that glowed copper - lots of spiders, a daddy longlegs, and mosquitoes. I didn't see the last, but I got bitten six times.)
I also exchanged friendly words with one of our neighbors for the first time since . . . I don't know when we last exchanged words. Probably in my childhood. My mother had a running feud with these particular neighbors, and I'm reasonably sure that they're the ones who called thecops city inspectors in to tell Doug and me that we couldn't pile brushwood in our garden.
On the other hand, the neighbors have bird feeders in their back yard, and they said not a word when we let our back yard (which adjoins theirs, though with shrubs in between) turn into a meadow last summer. So I'm mildly hopeful that they won't declare war on us as I make changes to the yard. At any rate, it was a pleasant surprise to have one of the neighbors greet me. "Looking for rabbits?" he asked, having found me staring (I suppose rather blankly) at the thicket of trees and shrubs that constitutes the entrance to the western side of our back yard.
"No, I'm looking at our garden," I replied with a smile.
Doug sniggered when I reported this conversation. "Okay, so I was looking at what used to be our garden," I added to him. (The garden - an upraised bed of earth next to our back patio - has been taken over by trees and shrubs that planted themselves during our period of idleness. One lone rose struggles on valiantly.)
Today I also sorted some of my books, putting aside the ones I haven't read in twenty years and probably never will. I browsed through Mother's photographs. I began to tackle my overly voluminous inbox. And I tried, as much as possible, to stay calm and laid back.
Though I didn't quite reach the heights of simplicity today, I've decided that spending every other day on simplicity/exercise/housework/upkeep is an excellent plan. It puts less pressure on me during my editing/layout days - I don't have to try to cram in housework/upkeep on top of everything else - and it automatically winds me down after a day of activities that are likely to get me hyped.
*** 28 June 2009. Gardening: An unexpected visitor.
I spent the pre-dawn minutes of Saturday morning replying to gardening comments on my blog, chatting away about the wildlife I want my garden to attract, and explaining to one person that I virtually live in a nature reserve, because there are so many nature reserves around here.
Finally, at dawn, I shut down my computer. I went downstairs, turned to open the refrigerator--
--and saw a deer walk past my patio door.
Okay, so that's a bit bigger than the type of animal I'd anticipated attracting to my yard.
We do have lots of deer in my hometown. We have a national park in the south part of the city and city-owned woodland to the northeast; deer are to be found in both places.
But there's a four-lane highway between our house and the national park, and we're quite a few blocks away from the city woodland where the deer dwell. I don't ever recall seeing a deer visit our yard. (My mother would remember. I keep wishing she were still around to ask these questions.)
This deer didn't stay long; it headed, in a leisurely manner, into the neighbor's yard while I was racing upstairs to wake Doug and tell him. A half hour later, as I was sitting in my study, I saw the deer saunter through our front yard and cross the street.
Of course, I know that it was visiting our neighborhood for all the wrong reasons. We've had deer overpopulation in this area because of the lack of predators. And I sure hope that the deer got back home okay. (This being dawn on a Saturday morning, I couldn't think of any authorities that I could contact in time to let them know of the deer's presence.)
Still, it's nice that we have enough trees on our property that the deer didn't look as though it was entirely out of place.
*** 28 June 2009. Writing: Miscounting The Eternal Dungeon.
Finally got the paperback template done.
I think. I'm still waiting for the inevitable moment when I discover another problem. But I did begin laying out the text of Rebirth today. I think I'm going to have to run the results past my father; there are things about the layout I'm uncertain about. (I hope he took his laptop with him to Europe. With my luck, he'll have only taken his iPod Touch.)
However, I had a moment of wincing when I looked again at the word count of the third volume of The Eternal Dungeon - the volume I was sure was complete - and discovered that I'm two novellas short of a novel's length.
I know how that accident happened. I'd originally planned to include two additional novellas in the volume, but they ended up getting so long that they turned into the fourth volume in the series. Well, it's just as well that I need to write additional material; the third volume, as it stands, has an incomplete feel to it, due to me having torn out those two final stories. And gosh, it just pains me to know that I'll have to write more Eternal Dungeon stories. :)
More worrisome is the fact that my latest Kindle novel hasn't been discounted by Amazon. I hope that's just a temporary setback, or it will screw up my plans to publish various novels in Kindle format.
*** 29 June 2009. Writing: Progress with publishing and with my Internet addiction.
A good day. I worked out a revised publishing plan today that will cut down on the amount of work I have to do in getting my writings published, but will also, I hope, bring in greater profits. I'll give more details when I've put the new plans into place. For now, I really feel as though a weight has lifted from my shoulders.
I also had some remarkable progress in fighting my Internet addiction. I went online to check on something that couldn't wait till later this week, and I only spent an hour and forty minutes online. Marvellous. I hope that this new regime turns out to work; if it does, I'll pass on my secret.
"It is this type of extremism, of absolutism, of total surrender, of unconditional 'yes,' of unwavering obedience . . . that frightens me and makes me such a wishy-washy soul, wanting to keep a foot in both worlds. But that is how one stumbles."
--Henri J. M. Nouwen: The Genesee Diary.
For newcomers: Background to my writing entries | Background to my mentoring entries | Background to my simplicity entries | Background to my home entries.
*** 23 June 2009. Simplicity: Taking a second look at my life.
On Sunday I spent twelve hours online, only two of which were devoted to business.
On Sunday evening, I told myself that I clearly needed to spend the next day on simplicity tasks, in order to refresh my mind. I also told myself that I didn't have the time, because I wanted to get my paperback layout done before my father left for Europe this week. I went to bed uncertain of what to do.
On Monday, I spent five-and-a-half hours reading and writing about gardening.
On Tuesday, I spent eight hours reading, writing, and acquiring library books about gardening.
On Tuesday evening, I finally admitted to myself that I'd gone straight from an Internet browsing addiction to an offline browsing addiction. I made firm plans to devote the next day to simplicity tasks. As preparation, I picked up The Genesee Diary, where I found the words I quoted above.
Almost a year ago, I swore to myself that I would dedicate the next twelve months to changing my life. At the beginning of this year, I renewed that vow.
But how much progress have I really made? I've achieved little improvements in various areas, but have I fundamentally changed the core of how I approach life?
The core of how I approach life is without simplicity. I know the difference between the simple life and the complicated life because my heartbeat picks up when my life is complicated. I flit from activity to activity and lack the ability to concentrate on anything except with the help of my hypomania. I ignore clear indications that problems have arisen in my life. I'm callous to the needs of other people. I let important tasks pass by in favor of more enjoyable tasks. I act as though I'm on speed.
When my life is simple, things slow down. I'm more aware of my environment, my friends and family and online acquaintances, and the activities I undertake. Enjoyment comes as a byproduct of mindfulness on any given task rather than from a perception that certain tasks are better or worse. I do fewer tasks, and I do those tasks slower, but I do those tasks better.
At the moment, the only way in which I can achieve this state is by deliberately choosing to do only a select number of tasks that I know are unlikely to trigger hypermania in me. I severely limit reading, because that has a strong tendency to trigger my hypermania. Ditto with writing, and video-watching is off the agenda altogether. The only other things I allow myself to do are tasks that I normally avoid: housework, upkeep, phone calls, and exercise.
This works. It slows me down. This is my version of "leaving the world."
But I have to return eventually. And when I do, I find myself, like Father Nouwen, torn between two worlds.
Thinking about it tonight, I decided that, if spending one day a week on simplicity tasks isn't proving sufficient to keep me from falling back into old patterns, then I need to increase the amount of time I devote to simplicity to every other day. Because heaven knows that I have plenty of upkeep and housework to do; it's not as though, in a purely practical sense, I'd be wasting time if I devoted more time to that type of work. And the results might increase my efficiency at professional work on other days.
Which is avoiding the main point, of course. I need to do this regardless as to whether it's beneficial from a practical point of view. But I can't avoid thinking about the practical impact, because writing is my vocation.
What is it they say to new writers? "Kill your darlings"? The idea is that, in order to achieve the best writing, you must delete the passages you most love. What Father Nouwen was struggling with was the same problem: of how to achieve the best by giving up beloved attachments.
*** 24 June 2009. Simplicity, Gardening, and Home: Spiders, housework, and me.
"O ye green one," Doug said dryly when I proposed that, after our current mower dies, we buy a push mower.
I spent another day gardening-focussed, but it was a more relaxed day. I cleared out more English ivy and went looking for wildlife on our property. (I found birds I could hear in the trees but not see, an earthworm, ants, some relative of the dragonfly, a lightning bug, some little striped flying creatures that looked as though they might be some sort of bee, various tiny flying insects I couldn't identify - such as an insect that glowed copper - lots of spiders, a daddy longlegs, and mosquitoes. I didn't see the last, but I got bitten six times.)
I also exchanged friendly words with one of our neighbors for the first time since . . . I don't know when we last exchanged words. Probably in my childhood. My mother had a running feud with these particular neighbors, and I'm reasonably sure that they're the ones who called the
On the other hand, the neighbors have bird feeders in their back yard, and they said not a word when we let our back yard (which adjoins theirs, though with shrubs in between) turn into a meadow last summer. So I'm mildly hopeful that they won't declare war on us as I make changes to the yard. At any rate, it was a pleasant surprise to have one of the neighbors greet me. "Looking for rabbits?" he asked, having found me staring (I suppose rather blankly) at the thicket of trees and shrubs that constitutes the entrance to the western side of our back yard.
"No, I'm looking at our garden," I replied with a smile.
Doug sniggered when I reported this conversation. "Okay, so I was looking at what used to be our garden," I added to him. (The garden - an upraised bed of earth next to our back patio - has been taken over by trees and shrubs that planted themselves during our period of idleness. One lone rose struggles on valiantly.)
Today I also sorted some of my books, putting aside the ones I haven't read in twenty years and probably never will. I browsed through Mother's photographs. I began to tackle my overly voluminous inbox. And I tried, as much as possible, to stay calm and laid back.
Though I didn't quite reach the heights of simplicity today, I've decided that spending every other day on simplicity/exercise/housework/upkeep is an excellent plan. It puts less pressure on me during my editing/layout days - I don't have to try to cram in housework/upkeep on top of everything else - and it automatically winds me down after a day of activities that are likely to get me hyped.
*** 28 June 2009. Gardening: An unexpected visitor.
I spent the pre-dawn minutes of Saturday morning replying to gardening comments on my blog, chatting away about the wildlife I want my garden to attract, and explaining to one person that I virtually live in a nature reserve, because there are so many nature reserves around here.
Finally, at dawn, I shut down my computer. I went downstairs, turned to open the refrigerator--
--and saw a deer walk past my patio door.
Okay, so that's a bit bigger than the type of animal I'd anticipated attracting to my yard.
We do have lots of deer in my hometown. We have a national park in the south part of the city and city-owned woodland to the northeast; deer are to be found in both places.
But there's a four-lane highway between our house and the national park, and we're quite a few blocks away from the city woodland where the deer dwell. I don't ever recall seeing a deer visit our yard. (My mother would remember. I keep wishing she were still around to ask these questions.)
This deer didn't stay long; it headed, in a leisurely manner, into the neighbor's yard while I was racing upstairs to wake Doug and tell him. A half hour later, as I was sitting in my study, I saw the deer saunter through our front yard and cross the street.
Of course, I know that it was visiting our neighborhood for all the wrong reasons. We've had deer overpopulation in this area because of the lack of predators. And I sure hope that the deer got back home okay. (This being dawn on a Saturday morning, I couldn't think of any authorities that I could contact in time to let them know of the deer's presence.)
Still, it's nice that we have enough trees on our property that the deer didn't look as though it was entirely out of place.
*** 28 June 2009. Writing: Miscounting The Eternal Dungeon.
Finally got the paperback template done.
I think. I'm still waiting for the inevitable moment when I discover another problem. But I did begin laying out the text of Rebirth today. I think I'm going to have to run the results past my father; there are things about the layout I'm uncertain about. (I hope he took his laptop with him to Europe. With my luck, he'll have only taken his iPod Touch.)
However, I had a moment of wincing when I looked again at the word count of the third volume of The Eternal Dungeon - the volume I was sure was complete - and discovered that I'm two novellas short of a novel's length.
I know how that accident happened. I'd originally planned to include two additional novellas in the volume, but they ended up getting so long that they turned into the fourth volume in the series. Well, it's just as well that I need to write additional material; the third volume, as it stands, has an incomplete feel to it, due to me having torn out those two final stories. And gosh, it just pains me to know that I'll have to write more Eternal Dungeon stories. :)
More worrisome is the fact that my latest Kindle novel hasn't been discounted by Amazon. I hope that's just a temporary setback, or it will screw up my plans to publish various novels in Kindle format.
*** 29 June 2009. Writing: Progress with publishing and with my Internet addiction.
A good day. I worked out a revised publishing plan today that will cut down on the amount of work I have to do in getting my writings published, but will also, I hope, bring in greater profits. I'll give more details when I've put the new plans into place. For now, I really feel as though a weight has lifted from my shoulders.
I also had some remarkable progress in fighting my Internet addiction. I went online to check on something that couldn't wait till later this week, and I only spent an hour and forty minutes online. Marvellous. I hope that this new regime turns out to work; if it does, I'll pass on my secret.
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